Vienna's Mayor Michael Ludwig and City Councilor for Culture Veronica Kaup-Hasler on the death of Peter Weibel

Ludwig: “Grave of honor for pioneers who were always ahead of their time”

Vienna (OTS) – “The death of Peter Weibel is an enormous loss for the Viennese, the Austrian and the international art and media world,” Vienna’s Mayor Michael Ludwig reacted to the sad news. And the city manager continued: “As a media artist, theoretician, curator, director and long-time head of the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Weibel represented the rare species of ‘pioneers’. He was never ‘up to date’ with his thoughts and actions, but always a few turns ahead of them.”

Ludwig: “As an artist and teacher, Weibel was – in the best sense of the word – always a ‘people collector’ who gathered and inspired highly talented like-minded people around him. His public art events with Valie Export, which attracted public attention far beyond the borders of art lovers, are still vividly remembered.”

“I express my heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family,” the mayor said. “The City of Vienna will pay tribute to the incomparable Peter Weibel with an honorary grave.”

Kaup-Hasler: “Intellectual jack of all trades and rebel in many art disciplines”

“I will remember Peter Weibel as a flexible and fast-talking intellectual, as a cosmonaut who wanted to penetrate deeper and deeper into the cosmos of knowledge, tried to change people’s perceptions in the best and most humanistic sense and dreamed of his home as a library,” emphasizes Vienna’s City Councilor for Culture and Science Veronica Kaup-Hasler in view of the death of the artist and theorist.

“Peter Weibel once said: ‘You can predict the future well if you make it yourself’. The intellectual jack-of-all-trades and rebel in many art disciplines will be missing in Austria: not only as an avant-gardist in theory and practice, as a tireless thinker and artist, but also as an enabler, as a curator, museum man and festival director and as a teacher who promotes the progress of culture and arts towards the future with his ideas and visions.”

“With Peter Weibel, Austria is losing an alert, critical and, above all, warning spirit that has long diagnosed the decline in knowledge in our society and associated it with the increase in authoritarian and irrational structures. My sympathy goes out to his relatives, his companions and friends,” Kaup-Hasler concludes.