Peter Weibel
From critiques of language such as those provoked by Ludwig Wittgenstein, through the Vienna Group and Vienna Actionism, artists focused attention on the assumption that our inability to gain precise knowledge about the world is rooted in the nature of our language. Significantly, this was always associated with strong critiques of society. As early as in the nineteenth century, the philosopher and language critic Fritz Mauthner had been an incorrigible anti-establishment figure, not to mention the central figures of the Vienna Group and Vienna Actionism. Peter Weibel, who is very close to
this tradition and who from the outset situated his artistic practice between poetry, music, philosophy, and science, is interested in the communicative, agitative element of art. Logically enough, sociopolitical critique and change must be accompanied by analytical and reformative efforts in one’s own work—anything else would mean a continuation of the traditional, bourgeois concept of art. G.H.
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