Peter Weibel (Austrian German: [ˈvaɪbl], ˈvaɪbəl, 5 March 1944 – 1 March 2023) was an Austrian post-conceptual artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He started out in 1964 as a visual poet, then later moved from the page to the screen within the sense of post-structuralist methodology. His work includes virtual reality and other digital art forms. From 1999 he was the director of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
Weibel was born in Odesa, USSR on 5 March 1944. He was raised in Ried, Upper Austria, and studied French and cinematography in Paris. In 1964 he began to study medicine in Vienna, but changed soon to mathematics, with an emphasis on logic.
Weibel's work was in conceptual art, performance, experimental film, video art, and computer art.
Beginning in 1965 from semiotic and linguistic reflections (Austin, Jakobson, Peirce, Wittgenstein), Weibel developed an artistic language, which led him from experimental literature to performance. In his performative actions, he explored not only the "media" language and body, but also film, video, television, audiotape and interactive electronic environments. Critically he analyzed their function for the construction of reality. Besides taking part in happenings with members of the Vienna Actionism, he developed from 1967 (together with Valie Export, Ernst Schmidt Jr. and Hans Scheugl) an "expanded cinema" inspired by the American one and reflects the ideological and technological conditions of cinematic representation. Weibel elaborated on these reflections, from 1969, in his video tapes and installations. With his television action "tv und vt works", which was broadcast by the Austrian Television (ORF) in 1972, he transcended the borders of the gallery space and queried video technology in its application as a mass medium. In 1966 he was with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, Hermann Nitsch and others a participant of the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London.
Weibel worked using a variety of materials, forms and techniques: text, sculpture, installation, film and video.