Events of the ZMI

The Center for Media and Interactivity (ZMI) is a site for encounters between scholars, artists and a public interested in the research concerns of the ZMI. The ZMI’s spectrum of activities extends from conferences and meetings with international participation to workshops, symposia, lectures, and regular events for students and junior scholars, all the way to film series on selected topics.

A highlight was the much-noticed awarding of the 2007 Giessen prize for "Performing Science" in the categories of scholarly presentation and lecture performance. In 2011, the ZMI offered the award for the second time. Performing Science honored innovative forms of knowledge presentation of any academic discipline. In this context, evaluation was not only based on scholarly elocution but also on research-oriented lecture performance or virtuoso media use. Inspired by the history of Justus Liebig University, in the International Year of Chemistry 2011, Performing Science was about new forms of experimental lecturing. For the second edition of the competition the ZMI had won over the top-class sponsors Robert Bosch Stiftung and BASF.

Another highlight was the grand opening of the virtual place of commemoration "The Chronicle of the Ghetto Lodz/Litzmannstadt - The Last Year" in June 2011 in the auditorium of the JLU, where Ulrich Matthes read passages from the "Ghetto Chronicle." The Ghetto Lodz/Litzmannstadt was one of the largest territories of the National Socialists. It was considered a "European triangle of death." Between 1939 and 1944, the Nazis herded almost 200,000 Jews into this place. The most shocking document of the ghetto is the so-called "Ghetto Chronicle." Every day, the detained persons compiled the most important events concerning their lives and deaths into a chronicle of about 2,000 pages giving insight into the everyday life as well as the complex and ever-threatening living conditions on site. The last twelve months of this historical document were digitized and made available online by the LOEWE-focus area "Cultural Techniques and Their Mediatization" as part of the event. The complete chronicle was published in five volumes by the Wallenstein Verlag in 2007. The event was recorded and broadcast as a prelude to a series of readings by the radio station Hessischer Rundfunk (HR) in July. As from August 2011, the chronicle entries are read out daily for one year on hr2-kultur.

In July 2009, the lecture series "The ZMI Science Lounge" was launched with the panel discussion "Who owns knowledge? The debate about Google Books, Open Access and the Heidelberg Appeal." With this series, at irregular intervals the ZMI reacts to the major current debates on topics regarding "Media and Interactivity."




This section provides an overview of ZMI events.

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