Only recently did he have his picture taken at his jam-packed desk: there media artist Peter Weibel was about to leave the ZKM in Karlsruhe. Now he is dead.
The internationally renowned media artist Peter Weibel is dead. The longtime head of the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM) died on Wednesday after a short, serious illness in a Karlsruhe hospital, as a ZKM spokesman said on Thursday. Weibel would have been 79 years old on Sunday. The “Badische Latest News” had previously reported on it. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, the Austrian was an important performance and video artist. He leaves behind a partner.
Baden-Württemberg’s Minister of Art Petra Olschowski (Greens) said: “His advanced approaches were always challenging, because Peter Weibel was often ahead of today with his often brilliant concepts.” Thanks to this attitude and uncompromising commitment, the ZKM has a worldwide reputation and is constantly developing and opening itself up to topics and social issues. “In this sense, he was an important advisor in many committees in the country and also to me personally.”
The city is losing a pioneer and an outstanding personality, said Mayor Frank Mentrup (SPD). “Karlsruhe remains associated with his name worldwide as the location of the ZKM and as a UNESCO city of media art.”
Multiple awards
In the course of his life, Weibel had taught in Vienna, Canada and New York, among other places. From 1989 to 1994 he headed the Institute for New Media he founded at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. From 1993 to 1999 he was Commissioner for Austria at the Venice Biennale and artistic director of the Neue Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz. He has received many awards for his work.
Since 1999 – almost a quarter of a century – he has managed the ZKM and helped the house to international renown and to a hub of digital art. In a few weeks, at the end of March, the era should have ended. Only recently, for this reason, had he been photographed in his office, which was filled with mountains of paper, books, bags, boxes, photos and a change of shoes. “The ZKM was a spaceship with an unbelievable altitude,” he said with some melancholy. Alistair Hudson will succeed him as ZKM board member on April 1st.
“My main quality is speed,” Weibel once said. And that’s exactly how he spoke: he rattled off his views on art and the world at breakneck speed – always friendly, precise, full of ideas and up to date.
A major retrospective at the ZKM in 2019 gave an insight into his broad spectrum of work. The “respective Peter Weibel” presented him with around 400 works as an action, video, sound and photo artist, but also as a theoretician and scientist. (dpa)