Taught in Vienna, Canada and New York
Just before his 79th birthday: Media artist Peter Weibel dies in Karlsruhe
Peter Weibel recently photographed his office, which contained mountains of papers, books, bags, boxes, photographs and shoes.
© Source: Uli Deck/dpa
Karlsruhe. Internationally renowned media artist Peter Weibel has died, the longtime head of the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM) on Wednesday at a Karlsruhe hospital, a ZKM spokesman said on Thursday.
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Weibel would have turned 79 on Sunday. “Badische Latest News” reported on this earlier. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, the Austrian was an important performance and video artist. He leaves a spouse.
Art Minister Olszovsky: “An Important Adviser”
Baden-Württemberg’s arts minister Petra Olszowski (Greens) said: “His advanced approaches were always challenging, as Peter Weibel has pushed forward today with his often brilliant ideas.”
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Thanks to this approach and uncompromising commitment, ZKM has a global reputation and continues to grow and open itself to topics and social issues. “In this sense, he was an important advisor to many groups in the country and to me personally.”
Mayor Frank Mentrup (SPD) said the city is losing a pioneer and a great personality. “Karlsruhe is associated with its name worldwide as a ZKM site and a UNESCO City of Media Arts.”
Taught in Vienna, Canada and New York
During his lifetime, Weibel taught in Vienna, Canada, and New York, among other places. From 1989 to 1994 he headed New Media, a company founded in the Stadtelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He has received many awards for his work.
Weibel helped ZKM gain an international reputation
Since 1999 – almost a quarter of a century – he has managed the ZKM, helping the house become a center of internationally renowned and digital art. In a few weeks, at the end of March, the era should have ended.
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Recently, for this reason, he has been photographed in his office where paper, books, bags, boxes, photos and shoes have been transformed. “The ZKM is a spacecraft of incredible height,” he said with some melancholy. Alistair Hudson will succeed him as a ZKM board member on April 1.
“My main quality is speed”
“My main quality is speed,” Weibel once said. That’s how he spoke: he rattled off his views on art and the world at breakneck speed—always friendly, accurate, ideas, and up-to-date.
A major retrospective at ZKM in 2019 gave an insight into his wide range of work. “Our own Peter Weibel” gave him around 400 works as an action, video, sound and photographer, but also as a theorist and scientist.
RND/dpa
“Communicator. Entrepreneur. Introvert. Passionate problem solver. Organizer. Social media ninja.”