Professor at The European Graduate School / EGS

Peter Weibel (b. 1944 in Odessa, Ukraine) is an artist, art- and media theoretician, and curator. He works at the intersections of performance, conceptual art, and media art.

After studies of French literature and film in Paris and medicine in Vienna, Weibel turned to mathematics, with particular emphasis on logic. Next to collaborations with members of the “Wiener Gruppe” (Vienna Group) and of “Wiener Aktionismus” (Viennese Actionism) Weibel, together with Valie Export, Ernst Schmidt jr. and Hans Scheugl, began to develop an “expanded cinema” in 1966 and, with his “teleaktionen” (television actions), explored the medium of video in relation to the mass medium of television.

Weibel has taught at numerous universities: Between 1976 and 1981 he was a lecturer in “Theory of Form” at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he also held a Visiting Professorship in Design and Art Education (1981-1984) and, between 1984 and 2017, a Professorship in Visual Media Art. At “Gesamthochschule Kassel” Weibel was a Visiting Professor in Media Art (1979/80), lecturer in Perception Theory (1981) and Professor in Photography (1982-1985). Between 1984 and 1989 Weibel served as Associate Professor in Video and Digital Arts at State University of New York at Buffalo, and held Visiting Professorships at the College of Art and Design in Halifax, Canada (1981), the University of New South Wales, Australia (2009-2012) and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (2018/19).

Other activities and positions include: Director/founder of the Institute of New Media at Staedelschule in Frankfurt/M. (1989-1994); artistic advisor (1986-1995) and artistic director (1992-1995) of Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria, and chief curator of the Neue Galerie at Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria (1993-1998).

Weibel was Austrian commissioner at Venice Biennale (1993-1999), artistic director of the International Biennial Seville/ Biacs3 (2008) and of the fourth Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art (2011).

Since 1999, Weibel is Chairman and CEO of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, and, since 2017, Director of the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Weibel is recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including “Siemens Medienkunstpreis” (1997), “Großes Ehrenzeichen für Verdienste um die Republik Österreich” (2002), “Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis” (2004), “Eyes & Ears Excellence Award” (2005),  “Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres” (2008), “Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge-Preis für unkonventionelle Kunstvermittlung” of Stiftung Preussische Seehandlung (2009), “Verdienstmedaille des Landes Baden-Wuerttemberg” (2009) , “Europäischer Kultur-Projektpreis” of the European Foundation for Culture (2009), “Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst 1. Klasse” (2010), “Oskar-Kokoschka- Preis” (2014) and “Österreichischer Kunstpreis – Medienkunst” (2017).

In 2007, Weibel received an honorary doctorate from the University of Art and Design Helsinki and, in 2013, from the University Pécs, Hungary. He became a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2009 and, in the same year, also a full member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste Düsseldorf. He was appointed an active member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts Salzburg in 2013 as well as a member of the Russian Academy of Arts Moscow in 2015.

Recent (co-)curatorial projects include the projection biennial “lichtsicht“ in Bad Rothenfelde (editions 5 and 6/ 2015-2017) and “generator marx: capital | digital” at medienkunstlabor Trier (2018); newer projects at ZKM Karlsruhe include “Beat Generation” (2016/17), “Kunst in Europa 1945–1968. Der Kontinent, den die EU nicht kennt“ (2017), „Open Codes. Die Welt als Datenfeld“ (2017-19); „Leben in digitalen Welten“ (2017/18); „DIA-LOGOS. Ramon Llull und die Kunst des Kombinierens“ (2018) and „Kunst in Bewegung. 100 Meisterwerke mit und durch Medien (2018/19).

Having participated in countless group exhibitions, festivals and performances, Weibel has had numerous solo exhibitions at venues such as MMOMA/ Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 21er Haus (Vienna), MuseumsQuartier (Vienna), Artelier Contemporary (Graz) , Galerie Anita Beckers (Frankfurt), Médiathèque André Malraux (Strasbourg), Kunsthalle (Budapest) or Moderna Galerija (Ljubljana).

 Weibel has published extensively since 1966. Among his many book publications are Kritik der Kunst. Kunst der Kritik: es says & I say, Texte 1965-1973 (Jugend & Volk, 1973);  Time Slot. Geschichte und Zukunft der apparativen Wahrnehmung vom Phenakistiskop bis zum Quantenkino (Walther König, 2006); Sound Art: Sound as a Medium of Art (MIT Press, forthcoming); he edited Global Activism: Art and Conflict in the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2015) and, with Bruno Latour, Iconoclash: Beyond the Image-Wars in Science, Religion and Art (MIT Press, 2002).