In Conversation: Making & Memory
Curators Valerie Messini and Brooklyn
J. Pakathi in conversation with artist Jakob Lena Knebl and Ulrike Kuch, Rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
Presented by the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures as part of the exhibition Thinking Through Weibel.
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 Peter 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.
Jakob Lena Knebl
Born in Baden, Austria, in 1970, Jakob Lena Knebl is
an artist, curator, and Professor of Transmedia Art at University of Applied Arts Vienna. She studied fashion design with
Raf Simons and textual sculpture with Heimo Zobernig. Her work examines the relationship between art, design, and socio-cultural
phenomena, creating immersive environments where identity and desire are sensually experienced and renegotiated.
Ulrike Kuch
Ulrike Kuch has been Vice President for Social Transformation at the Bauhaus University
Weimar since June 2023. Kuch studied architecture at the Bauhaus University Weimar, the Teknillinen Korkeakoulu Helsinki (now
Aalto University), the Technical University of Berlin, and the Berlin University of the Arts. Ulrike Kuch has been involved
in the strategic development of the Bauhaus University Weimar and the shaping of democratic processes as a member of the University
Council, the Senate, the Senate Committee for Research & Projects, and as co-director of the Bauhaus Institute for History
and Theory of Architecture and Planning. Kuch's research focuses on architecture and image, phenomenology of architecture,
peripheral architectures, and global history of architecture. Ulrike Kuch is rector of the University of Applied Arts since
November 2025.
Valerie Messini
Valerie Messini is a registered architect, digital artist
and Senior Scientist at the Peter Weibel Research Institute for Digital Cultures. Her research dives into the concept of nothingness,
examining how digital technologies and digital design tools impact space, identity, and perception, alongside the role of
immersive media and virtual space in shaping our understanding and interaction with the digital realm. Her PhD “void set –
about emptiness in virtual space” was initially supervised by Peter Weibel and after his demise by Clemens Apprich.
She published in international journals and presented her research at multiple Conferences around Europe.
Brooklyn
J. Pakathi
Brooklyn J. Pakathi is a transmedia artist based in Vienna whose practice critically examines ontologies
of emotion through material and spatial interventions. Influenced by phenomenology and affect theory, their work explores
configurations of intimacy, melancholy, and longing, questioning and reconfiguring the boundaries between the tangible and
the immaterial. As an independent curator, Pakathi's research focuses on methodologies of decolonization, cultural justice,
and alternative epistemologies that address technology and spatial practice.
This exhibition Thinking Through
Weibel is initiated by the Weibel Institute for Digital Cultures and emerges through collaboration with the Institute Collection
and Archive and the AIL, all part of the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
