Peter Weibel

Peter Weibel was artist, curator and theorist. For more than six decades, he shaped contemporary art, especially media art, through his practice and theory.

Born on March 5, 1944 in Odessa, Ukraine, his family fled to Austria at the end of the war. After graduating from high school in 1963, he studied literature, medicine and mathematics in Paris and Vienna. As early as 1964, Weibel came into contact with the experimental filmmakers Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt Jr. and soon afterwards also with Vienna's literary and artistic avant-garde, including Friederike Mayröcker, Ernst Jandl, Günter Brus, Otto Muehl and Hermann Nitsch. He received important impulses for his language-critical attitude and structuralist methods from the members of the »Wiener Gruppe«. From 1966–68, Weibel initially appeared with literary and film-theoretical texts as well as works of visual poetry and performance. From 1966 to 1969, Weibel was involved in a series of events that exhibited characteristics of the Fluxus movement, but are now classified as »Wiener Aktionismus«, a term he coined with the publication of the book »Wien. Bildkompendium Wiener Aktionismus und Film« (1970). However, Weibel set himself apart from »Wiener Aktionismus« early on through his experimental use of technical media (film, tape, electronics).

As curator and artistic director of various institutions – the Ars Electronica, the Neue Galerie Graz, the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and ZKM | Karlsruhe – he has left his mark on contemporary art with numerous groundbreaking exhibitions. Through his teaching activities at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt and the Center for Media Study at the State University of New York, as well as over 1,000 essays and over 180 books published by him, he has exerted a lasting influence as a theorist.

The archive – consisting of photographs, drawings, manuscripts and sketches as well as around three hundred videos, films and sound recordings – cover Peter Weibel's early artistic work from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s. The archive materials complement the numerous works by Weibel in the ZKM collection and offer an insight into his theoretical and artistic work. They serve as a source for scientific research and can also be linked to other archival fonds of ZKM | Archive with its focus on the history of media art.