In Conversation: Making & Memory

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This discussion reflects on what it means to revisit Peter Weibel’s early artistic practice through archival works and to position them alongside contemporary practices that unsettle, expand, or depart from his concerns. It asks how such a juxtaposition can generate fresh perspectives on media, politics, language, and play, and how contemporary artistic positions inflect and redirect these questions today. The conversation considers how the archival selections foreground formative impulses in Weibel’s work, while the invited artists open distinct lines of practice that move through other traditions and geographies. Together, these strands create a space where early artistic propositions can be encountered in relation to ongoing inquiries. The event also underscores the importance of the University’s role in supporting artistic experimentation and of the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures in shaping conditions for open, critical, and diverse trajectories. By bringing together the perspectives of rector Ulrike Kuch and the perspective of artist Jakob Lena Knebl, the conversation highlights both institutional and artistic commitments to sustaining forms of inquiry that remain unfinished, provisional, and vital. In framing the exhibition, the opening conversation invites the audience to think with the tension between archive and present practice. It sets the tone for Thinking Through Weibel as a project that treats beginnings as openings for further exploration, where the past and present are placed side by side to extend the possibilities of artistic thought.

Lecturers