Dr. Benjamin Steininger (he/him)

Benjamin Steininger's main research fields are the history and theory of industrial catalysis, history and theory of fossil resources, the project of a "chemical cultural theory", and a "critique of fossil reason."  These interests follow a long-standing agenda on the cultural history of acceleration and energy use, on the industrial history and theory of the materials in modernity and in the Anthropocene. Concrete materials interpreted in his work are apart from catalysts the products of chemical industries: fuels, fertilizers, ammunition, refined fossil raw materials, building materials. Crucial are furthermore the respective process landscapes and the transformation of chemical science and industry itsel - into and out of the fossil system.

Despite existing "material turns" in the humanities, the role of materials and of chemical technologies for the process of history in modernity and Anthropocene is still not enough reflected. To investigate the role of chemical catalysis provides some of the most important insights into the technicality of materials and the respective impact on the historical and geohistorical process in the Anthropocene.

The long-standing agenda was and is pursued within a large network of cooperation partners, including partners from industry and technology, scientific institutions (TU-Berlin, HU-Berlin, University of Halle, Petrocultures Network etc.), cultural institutions (such as Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Goethe-Institutes in Baku, Minsk, Novosibirsk, Oslo, Rotterdam, New York, Werkleitz Gesellschaft Halle, etc.). Some of the work in the last years was done in the collective "Beauty of Oil". And together with Dr. Nona Schulte-Römer from HU-Berlin, Benjamin Steininger started to produce the podcast "Syntheziser - Listening to the Future of Chemistry".

"Geoanthropolgy" is understood in this perspective as a philosophical endeavor. It is not less than the "conditio humana", a whole set of epistemological and political conditions that were shifted by the interaction of modern science and technology with geohistory, in particular with fossil resources and the respecive scientific approaches. The complexities of the actual technological and historical system are defined by shifts on both ends of this - so to speak - material/cultural coordinate system of the Anthropocene. It is therefor necessary to keep close focus both on the very material sphere of resources, industrial infrastructures, and the processes involved, and the abstract sphere of concepts, desires, and belief systems. This becomes comparatively obvious in the case of "Petromodernity". Not only technologies or material environments but also subjectivities and cultural expectations depend on the influx of fossil energy into almost all layers of all global cultures in modernity. 

In the specific arena of chemical industries, catalyis, and fossil resources this means to connect and to map specific molecular interventions with specific planetary effects, and in between examplary scopes of  individual and societal agency. "Atlas making", to detect and to discuss agencies and interconnections on many scales and in in many geographical political networks is in that respect an important method for Benjamin Steininger'S curatorial works and publications.