Peter Weibel

The photo shows Peter Weibel during the Expanded Cinema performance Nivea, which premiered in Vienna on 26 and 27 January 1967. In the light of a projector, the artist stands motionless in front of a screen for a minute holding a beach ball with the inscription »Nivea« in his raised hands. During the performance, a tape recorder plays the sound of a film camera. Production and projection do not take place consecutively, but simultaneously. The operators of the cinematographic apparatus are substituted, dispensed with, or their order is changed. Without projecting a film, the artist creates a »film without film« (Weibel) in which the cinematic representation of reality is replaced by immediate reality. The image and the object of the image converge. Both the image and the film stock, the material carrier of the film, become superfluous. Instead of the film stock, it is the screen that is exposed or illuminated. By replacing the technical reproducibility of film with reality Weibel liberates the cinematic image from the restrictive presentation requirements of cinema and from its use by the commercial film industry.