Partners in life and practice, a duo of Austrian artists associated with being in the vanguard of ideas about art and society,—in Irina Kulik’s next lecture.
Odessa-born Austrian artist Peter Weibel (b. 1944) studied film, literature, medicine, mathematics, and logic. His artistic practice is associated with performance, independent cinema and film, conceptual art, and interdisciplinary formats, that could include text and music and were informed by cutting edge linguistic and scientific theories. Weibel was close to the circle of Viennese Actionists; in 1967, together with Valie Export and some other artists, he founded the Austrian branch of Expanded Cinema; in the 1970s, he was involved in a music band; while in the 1980s he started experimenting with computer technologies and making installations. As a theorist and teacher of art, he has contributed significantly to the history of contemporary art in its relation to science, technology, and new media. Weibel curated the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993–1999, and is co-curator of the Facing the Future. Art in Europe 1945–1968 exhibition (2017) at Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.
Valie Export (b. 1940) is a female Austrian artist, an iconic figure of postwar European feminist art and performance. While referencing pop-culture and consumer society (“Valie Export” was a popular cigarette brand back then), the pseudonym the artist took in 1967 also allowed her to symbolically distance herself from her family name and that of her husband. Valie Export’s performances, video, installations, films, and photographs explore the role of a woman in contemporary art and society, often directly articulating issues dealing with gender, body, and sexuality. In the 1960s and 1970s, together with Peter Weibel, she performed and filmed a number of disturbing actions on the streets of Vienna, aimed at drawing public attention to the problem of representing the male and the female in visual culture. Just like Weibel, she has always worked in close relation to new media, technology, and critical theory.
