Our Nominees for Studienstiftung Scholarship – Larissa Mocka

A total of four cross-media publishing students from the Merz Akademie have been nominated for the 2021 scholarship call of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. This means that all the recommendations made by Professor Kevin B. Lee, who has accompanied and mentored the students since the beginning, have been included by the foundation in the further selection process.

We will be presenting the nominees in more detail here in the coming weeks.

In multiple courses including Introduction to Crossmedia Publishing, Long Form Media, Screen Stories, The Perfect Image and the Fachkolloquium Media Content and Expression, Larissa has proven herself as an author with a distinctive voice and perspective. From the beginning, Larissa’s talent as a writer was established, as she distinguished herself as a prolific and outstanding student in the course Writing for Crossmedia. She is now taking a leading role in the course Editorial Practices, where she is editing a journal publication featuring the outstanding works of other Merz Akademie students. In this role she is active in contacting teachers and students for contributions to the publication and curating the assembled materials for publication.

Beyond the more established practices of writing and publishing, Larissa is truly distinguishing herself in innovative modes of storytelling and essayistic practice. In the course Screen Stories, she wrote a brilliant essay about the experience of being killed in first person shooter video games as a reflection of death in the digital realm. She then adapted the essay into a desktop documentary video, skillfully navigating her online interface to follow her written narration. The resulting video, titled “The Venetian Jellyfish,” was truly one of the standout works of the course, and will screen at the 2021 Stuttgarter Filmwinter for Experimental Media, with other festival screenings sure to follow.

Prof. Kevin B. Lee summarizes: “From these examples it is clear that Larissa has a very distinguished practice as a writer, editor and storyteller, while expanding these modes into new and exciting media forms. In this way she fully embodies the principles of Crossmedia Publishing at Merz Akademie. Therefore I offer you my highest possible recommendation for Larissa Mocka.”

The next step is a seminar in which the nominees present their work and have a selection interview with a jury of experts.