Merz Akademie has appointed artist Danja Vasiliev to the newly established Professorship of Emerging Media in Art and Design, starting in the winter semester 2025/26. With this appointment, the institution aims to strengthen a critical and reflective engagement with increasingly accessible and evolving technologies in teaching—and, above all, to emphasize the societal role of designers and artists.
The ways in which we communicate and consume information—the technologies and platforms we use—are constantly changing and seemingly accelerating. This includes social media platforms, the development of user interfaces, the use of AI, and the pursuit of enhanced user experience.
In close cooperation with the existing New Media department—which teaches all forms of digital design at Merz Akademie—the newly created Professorship of Emerging Media in Art and Design is intended to foster artistically critical engagement with technologies in constant flux and to encourage (future) designers to question their societal role.
The professorship will support experimental and documentary practices in areas such as media activism, creative coding, AI, and games, and to promote a reflective approach to social media. Technologies today serve not only as tools but also as powerful forces that shape and permeate all aspects of life—from privacy and personal security to autonomy and collective responsibility.
Merz Akademie is delighted to have appointed Danja Vasiliev to this new position. President Dr Barbara M. Eggert emphasizes how his artistic and theoretical perspective will enrich the university’s profile: “As an artist, he has made significant contributions to discourse in the artistic-scientific field—not least as co-author of the Critical Engineering Manifesto (2011, with G. Savičić and J. Oliver). With his research interest in the interface of human-computer interaction and his hacker-oriented approach, he adds important dimensions to the Merz Akademie’s academic and artistic profile and will bring new impulses for activism through the means of art.”
Danja Vasiliev, born in Russia, is a media artist, critical engineer and lecturer who focuses intensively on computer technology, critically analyzing the internet, the use of personal data, and the complexity of networked systems. His works often deal with the creative misuse of technology, exposing vulnerabilities and questioning the mechanisms of control in digital systems.
One example is the project WannaScry! (2023), in which a security breach of a videoconferencing service was simulated. The intercepted biometric data—including age, mood, location, and chat logs—were publicly presented in Berlin, Madrid, and Brussels to raise awareness of potential misuse of such technologies.
He most recently taught in Nuremberg, Berlin, Linz, and Rotterdam and seeks to make students at Merz Akademie particularly aware of the value of open-source software. “Open source offers the necessary freedom for experimentation, research, and modification of existing systems. It will give students the opportunity to deconstruct and rethink technological systems. Together with the faculty and students of Merz Akademie, I aim to cultivate a critical mindset, an ethical understanding, and a forward-looking perspective on the rapidly evolving media landscape of the future,” Danja Vasiliev states.
Merz Akademie is a state-recognized, non-profit university for design, art, and media in Stuttgart. With its interdisciplinary profile at the intersection of art, design, humanities, technology, and social transformation, it positions itself as an innovative learning environment between an art academy, a university of applied sciences, and a humanities faculty. Founded in 1918 by architect and reform educator Albrecht Leo Merz, the Merz Akademie was state-recognized in 1985 under the initiative of his grandson Markus Merz by the State of Baden-Württemberg. As rector, he shaped the university for 35 years with an innovative concept of interdisciplinary integration between theory and practice. Since 2023, the artistic and academic direction of the institution has been led by art historian and scholar of comics art Dr Barbara M. Eggert. Among other things, she advocates for the expansion of the existing range of accredited study programs, which are committed both to an advanced understanding of media authorship and to meeting the demands of professional practice across the broad field between art and media technology.
