The Center for Art and Media (ZKM) is one of the most respected cultural centers in Europe. It encompasses several institutions - the Museum of New Art, the Media Museum, the AV Institute, the Institute for Music and Acoustics, the Institute for Media, Education and Science and the Film Institute under the leadership of Peter Weibel. ZKM closely cooperates with the Staatliche Hochschule fur Gestaltung that is situated in the same building as ZKM.
There are currently two exhibitions ongoing at the Museum - You_ser presenting participative practices in art (more about this in Magda Kobzova's submission), and Medium Religion focusing on religious motifs as artistic tools. ZKM disposes of an excellent library where you can find an extensive collection of books about new media, art and also the ZKM Edition. Another important part is the Mediathek - the audiovisual archive of ZKM. The video collection includes approximately 600 video art titles primarily from the period of 1960's - 1980's with a large collection of works by Woody and Steina Wasulkas. The ZKM video archive was established in 1991 and was initially curated by Dieter Daniels. The archive encompasses purchased works of video art, ZKM's own materials and Media Art Prix winning titles. Apart from the publicly accessible collection, ZKM also has a so-called Research Coolection that thanks to limited copyright, can be only viewed for research purposes. The Research Collection has approx. 5,000 titles.
The user interface is realised through audio and video jukeboxes. The video jukeboxes were first installed in 1997 and operate on Windows software. The videos are archived on CD's that are searched out by a "robot". ZKM also encompasses the unique laboratory Labor für antiquierte Videosysteme where video preservation and restoration techniques are developed (more than 50 various video formats, including U-matic).
