PETER KUBELKA

Born on March 23, 1934, in Vienna. He studied film in Vienna and Rome at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. In 1956, he participated in the Venice Biennale. In 1958, he created his first design for an ideal cinema.

In 1964, he founded the Austrian Film Museum together with Peter Konlechner. From 1966, Kubelka taught at a number of American universities, including New York University, the Chicago Art Institute, San Francisco State University, and Princeton University. In 1970, he co-founded the Anthology Film Archives in New York and designed the Invisible Cinema. In 1976, he built up the avant-garde film collection for the Centre Pompidou. From 1978 to 2000, Kubelka was a professor at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main and headed the class for film and cooking as an art form. At his instigation, cooking was included in the Städelschule's curriculum as an art form. In 1980, he founded the ensemble “Spatium Musicum,” which gave concerts in Paris, Chicago, and New York, among other places. In 1989, Kubelka realized the “Invisible Cinema” at the Austrian Film Museum. Since 1995, the program cycle “What is Film” has been shown every Tuesday at the Austrian Film Museum. Extensive film and cultural history lectures at international museums and universities. 

Peter Kubelka is a polymath who constantly ventures into new areas. As co-founder of the Anthology Film Archives in New York, he is described as a “polemical filmmaker” and one of the founders of avant-garde and metric film.

At the same time, a process of “de-specialization” began in the late 1960s, prompting Princeton professor P. Adams Sitney to call Kubelka a “philosopher of the senses.” One of the procedural results was Kubelka's development into a theorist of food. He elevated cooking to a philosophical level. He formulated the following summary for “the most intimate relationship we ever enter into with reality”: “Cooking is not only an educational process like other arts, but both: direct intervention in nature and an artistic educational process.”

Awards (Selection)
2015 Gold Award of Honour for Services to the Province of Vienna 
2013 Split Film Festival: Special Festival Award
2012 International Eckart Witzigmann Prize
2006 Honorary member of FIAF
2005 Austrian Decoration of Honour for Science and Art
2001 Gold Badge of Honour for Services to the Province of Vienna 

Filmography (Selection)
2012 MONUMENT FILM
2012 Antiphon
1996-2003 Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth)
1977 Pause
1966 Unsere Afrikareise (Our trip to Africa)
1960 Arnulf Rainer
1958 Schwechater
1957 Adebar
1955 Mosaik im Vertrauen (Mosaic in Confidence) [with Ferry Radax]

Exhibitions (Selection)
2014 Hommage á Peter Kubelka. Centre Pompidou, Paris
2013 Split Film Festival, Croatia
2008 Notation: Kalkül und Form in den Künsten (Notation: Calculation and Form in the Arts). Akademie der Künste, Berlin
2006 The Expanded Eye. Kunsthaus Zurich
2006 THAT’S NOT ENTERTAINMENT! CCCB Barcelona
2005 L’ŒIL MOTEUR (Motorauge). MAMCS Strasbourg
2005 Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht (Light Art from Artificial Light). ZKM (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe
2005 Touching. Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster
2004 International Festival of New Film and New Media, Split
1999 Time-Based-Art – Neue Zeitpraktiken der Medienkunst (Time-Based-Art – New temporal practices in media art). Kunsthalle Krems
1996 Austria im Rosennetz (Austria in the Network of Roses). Kunsthaus Zurich; MAK-Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brüssel
1988 Musikstunde (Music Lesson). Secession, Vienna