Peter Bexte, born 1954, has been Professor for Aesthetics at the KHM in Cologne since 2008. He received his M.A. in German Literature and Religious Sciences in 1984 from Freie Universität Berlin and his PhD in Sciences of Art in 1996 from the University of Kassel. In addition to various assistant professorships with the Academy of Art in Bremen (1989 to 1996), Peter Bexte worked as an editor for Art magazine Wolkenkratzer from 1984 to 1985. Furthermore, he was advisory board member of the Internationales Designzentrum (IDZ) in Berlin and curator of a division of Berlin's millennium exhibition "Sieben Hügel – Bilder und Zeichen des 21. Jahrhunderts". He has worked as a research lecturer at FHTW Berlin, at the University of Potsdam, at Humboldt University and the University of Arts in Berlin from 2001 to 2004. He was visiting professor for the "History and Theory of Technical Media" at the University of Potsdam from 2005 to 2008.




Fields of research

History of sciences and aesthetics, with a focus on the triangle of images/perception/media and concepts of space.

IKKM Research Project

Tables and Transformations. Some Ideas about the Notion of Relation

 Tables do not simply offer a neutral surface. A closer look at tables in artistic, scientific, religious or military contexts shows their active character: they transform relations. Surrealist artists have been well aware of this, performing time and again strange encounters of objects on a table (»la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection« as Lautréamont had it; cf. Maldoror, Chant 6, §1). The lecture will present some examples. It will especially discuss the notion of »relation« which was a common expression in structuralism. Wolfgang Kemp has applied it to the history of art, and Michel Serres has called his philosophy »une théorie des relations«. The expression »relation« refers to different traditions - formal logic, topology, linguistics, ethnography etc. These various traditions overlap each other whenever we say »relation«. Unfolding these various dimensions of the word will be necessary in order to understand what tables do.