AUSTRIA POST is honouring avant-garde artist Peter Weibel with a special stamp to be issued on 25 October 2014. The range of instruments used by the major avant-garde artist Peter Weibel includes texts, sculptures, videos, performances, installations, music and computer technology. He always has the courage to allow scope for his art and the analytical and critical approach that for him is closely associated with it – even in his role as curator, media theorist and journalist, Peter Weibel does not hold back. In 2014, he was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka prize for his complete oeuvre, and Austrian Post is honouring him with this commemorative stamp from the “Contemporary art” series. Peter Weibel was born in Odessa in the Ukraine on 5 March 1944, and grew up in Upper Austria. He began studying literature in Paris, moving to Vienna in 1964 where he registered for a degree in medicine, but finally switched to mathematics. At this time, he was moving from experimental literature towards action art. He was soon working with the Vienna actionists such as Otto Muehl, Günter Brus and Hermann Nitsch, and became famous for his critical discussion of the media and their contribution to the construction of reality. It was in particular his “fire speech” addressed to or rather against the government, “What is to be done”, which he held at the University of Vienna wearing a burning glove, that made him an important representative of the Austrian 1968 movement. With his partner at the time, Valie Export, he worked on an expanded cinema that deconstructed the traditional cinematic norms and rules, and his “tele-actions” were broadcast on Austrian television in 1972 during the “Impulse” programme. In the 1980s, Weibel began to address the digital processing of videos, while the 1990s enabled him to create his first interactive computer installations. Since 1976, Peter Weibel has been teaching at various academies, including the Vienna University of Applied Art, the Canadian College of Art and Design in Halifax and the State University of New York. Until 1994, he was head of the Institute for New Media at the Frankfurt Städelschule, from 1992 to 1995 he was also the artistic director of the Linz Ars Electronica, which he still today serves as artistic adviser. He has also curated the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Biennale on several occasions (1993 to 1999), the Neue Galerie at the Graz Joanneum (1992 to 2011) the Seville Biennale (2008) and the Moscow Biennale (2011). Since 1999, he has been chairman of the Centre for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe (ZKM). Weibel has published numerous articles on contemporary art, media theory, film and philosophy and is a major representative and creator of media art in Europe. The commemorative stamp shows the subject of the video “Peter Weibel Media Poet”, which uses selected extracts from videos from 1967 to 2009 to present the multifarious work of the media artist. Alongside performances and installations, it also shows his musical project “Hotel Morphila Orchestra”. [Source: AUSTRIA POST]
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 17:57:46 +0000
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