Cathedral priest Toni Faber led the funeral service for the artist and thinker who died at the age of 78. The saying on the part came from Peter Weibel himself: “Life is a short-term camouflage of death.” Lots of sympathy.
“Dead, dead, dead. But this time it’s me. Hear the forms of the dark.” This is how “Alpharhythmen” ends, one of the two, yes: hypnotic pieces by Peter Weibel’s band Hotel Morphila Orchestra, which were performed at his funeral service. The sentence printed on the back of the memory card also came from Weibel himself: “Life is a short-term camouflage of death.”
Numerous mourners from art, pop, politics, philosophy, mathematics, the media industry and hospitality filled the Dr. Karl Lueger Memorial Church, in which cathedral priest Toni Faber blessed the artist, museum director, pop musician and media theorist, who died on March 1 after a short illness at the age of 78, according to the Roman Catholic rite. The speech was given by Alfred Weidinger, scientific director of the Upper Austrian State Museum in Linz, the city whose art scene has had a strong influence on Weibel as artistic director of the computer art festival Ars Electronica. A computer had its say when Weidinger read a short obituary created by Chat GPT: A program trained by Weibel would never sound so banal. Weidinger himself thought wistfully of Weibel’s legendary speed of speech and his last plans: After retiring as head of the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, he wanted to return to Vienna – and move into a library with his 120,000 books, with a livable elevator in the middle, without kitchen. “How we would have liked to visit you in your tower!”
The cathedral priest about the Café Korb
“In my father’s house there are many mansions,” says the passage from the Gospel of John that Faber read. In his sermon, he asked where Weibel’s living environment had been – and recalled the famous action in which Weibel was led through the city by Valie Export on a dog leash, and the Café Korb, “where you get good food and refreshments”. . If you know where this coffee house is, you could live in an elevator. Weibel said his last words to the basket owner, his partner Susanne Widl: “Dear Sanni, good morning.”
Olga Neuwirth read from a text by Elfriede Jelinek, which echoed ghostly in the Art Nouveau church. Little was understood, a play on words about perishing and getting to the bottom and a complaint against the incomprehensible against which there is no contradiction and no objection: “I don’t want you to have died, but who will listen to me?”
The long procession of companions then accompanied Weibel’s coffin to the grave of honor. He is in a row after Renate Holm, Christiane Hörbiger, Friedrich Cerha.