It is with great sadness we announce the passing of Peter Weibel (5 March 1944 – 1 March 2023), artist, theorist, professor, curator, and for the last quarter century, director of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. Born in Odessa in 1944, Weibel built a multilayered and internationally highly relevant career, leaving an indelible mark on art and culture. As a thinker and artist, he dealt with issues of communication media and the ways of navigating the modern world ruled by algorithms, i.e., protocols for any given practice embodied either in the working of machines, in social practices and constellations, or in human thought and actions. Weibel knew Slovenia well, working closely with several art collectives, curating the well-received 2nd Triennial of Contemporary Art U3 (1997–98) at Moderna galerija in Ljubljana, and having a survey exhibition of his art entitled Open Work (1964–1979) at Moderna galerija in 2005.
Weibel studied literature, medicine, logic and mathematics, philosophy, and cinematography in Paris and Vienna. Between 1984 and 2017 he was Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna; between 1984 and 1989 he worked at the State University of New York in Buffalo; between 1982 and 1985 at the Gesamthochschule Kassel; and between 1989 and 1994 at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He also taught as a visiting professor at various institutions. Between 1986 and 1995, he served as Artistic Director of Ars Electronica in Linz, between 1993 and 2011 as Chief Curator of the Neue Gallerie of the Joanneum in Graz, as the Commissioner of the Austria Pavilion at the Venice Biennale several times, and as the head of a number of biennial events. He received many awards and accolades for his work. From 2009 onward, he was a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts. In 2013 he became a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the University of the Arts and Design Helsinki, and in 2013, of the University of Pécs. While Weibel was its Director, ZKM was known for its comprehensive surveys of various fields of contemporary art with special emphasis on such media as light, sound, video image, algorithms, moving text, activism, and negative space, as presented in the form of exhibitions with catalogues produced together with renowned collaborators. Weibel’s writings are collected in six volumes of the Enzyklopädie der Medien (Encyclopedia of Media), dedicated to architecture, music, art, literature, politics, and theory from the perspective of media theory (four volumes have already been published, the publication of the remaining two is scheduled within a year).
Peter Weibel remained active until the last, organizing an exhibition scheduled to open this spring as his final act as artistic and scientific head of ZKM. The last exhibition he curated at ZKM was Ole Scheeren: Spaces of Life, about the work of the internationally active architect from Karlsruhe and his idea that “form follows fiction”, which opened in December 2022. As usual, many events were organized in conjunction with the encyclopedic overview of the architect’s oeuvre presented at the exhibition, such as the launch of a new monumental book on 20th and 21st century architecture in relation to artistic, cultural, and social movements and events. Still on view at the ZKM is an exhibition by several partners, in which Weibel again outlined, like a visionary, one of the possible approaches in museum practice in contemporary art – the issue of digitally reviving a real-space exhibition (Iconoclash, 2002, ZKM, curated by Weibel in collaboration with an international interdisciplinary group headed by Bruno Latour). Weibel did not approach the project lightly. In virtual space, an exhibition should have a similar effect as in real space while also taking into account both the possibilities and limitations of the medium. While in physical space the open principle of installation is realized with exhibition architecture and scenography, the software-based digital models of exhibitions can be in motion and changeable, characteristics which represented an aspect of this original exhibition event. In this context preserving is not copying, but communication.
(https://iconoclash.beyondmatter.eu).
Every encounter with Peter Weibel, his work and extensive writings was and remains an incentive for and measure of our work, both now and in the future.
