About ZKM

The ZKM_Cube as a mosaic: Made up of many other images.

The ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe is a unique cultural institution worldwide, because it is a place that expands the original tasks of the museum.

It is a house of all media and genres, a house of both spatial arts such as painting, photography and sculpture and time-based arts such as film, video, media art, music, dance, theater and performance. ZKM was founded in 1989 with the mission of continuing the classical arts into the digital age. During the founding phase, the artist and author Jürgen Claus contributed his idea of an »electronic Bauhaus«, which was later adapted by Peter Weibel into the »digital Bauhaus«.

 

Mecca of Media Arts
As a »Mecca of Media Arts« (Peter Weibel), ZKM does not only deal with the innovations of communication and information technologies and the social change set in motion by them in theory and practice.
  • The »electronic Bauhaus« (Jürgen Claus) was to be housed in a forward-looking new building that would offer space for a museum, a (media art) collection, research institutes, studios and a media theatre.
  • Since 1997, ZKM has been housed in a former listed industrial building, the so-called Hallenbau A, which was one of the most architecturally advanced in Germany at the time it was built (1915-1918).
  • Photo of the installation 3D WATERMATRIX in which water falls to the ground and generates 3D shapes. A person is watching the insatallation.
    Mission Statement
    In keeping with its content, ZKM is at home in the digital world: at our digital dependency we want to share knowledge with you and pick up on current topics!

In its work, ZKM combines research and production, exhibitions and performances, collections and archives, mediation and events. Through interdisciplinary connections of these fields of work, ZKM as an agile organization can present and produce the development of art and media of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Symposia and other formats of theoretical discourse between art, philosophy, science, technology, business and politics complement the ZKM program to examine the effects of medialization, digitization and globalization on society.

Support Association ZKM / HfG e.V.

The Support Association ZKM / HfG e.V. was founded in Karlsruhe in 1988 and is an association of citizens and public figures. In Karlsruhe, it supports the ZKM | Center for Art and Media and the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) both – intellectually and materially.

Art needs Company!

The ZKM_Media Theater full of people who look at a canvas which shows amorphous structures in white

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