Benjamin Steininger

Benjamin Steininger is a cultural and media theorist. He works as a research associate at TU Berlin’s Unifying Systems in Catalysis (UniSysCat) cluster of excellence and at the MPI of Geoanthropology in Jena. He is the author of a book on the history of the German Autobahn and wrote his dissertation on the chemical catalyst as a key principle of the twentieth century. He conducts research into the role that industrial catalysis and fossil resources play in the modern and anthropocene eras. In 2016, he and Alexander Klose jointly founded the Beauty of Oil research collective to explore the contradictions and complexities of the petromodernity. (Cooperation with institutions such as the Goethe-Institut branches in Minsk, Baku, Oslo, Rotterdam, Novosibirsk and New York: beauty-of-oil.org).

A selection of publications by Benjamin Steininger on the Autobahn and petromodernity: Raum-Maschine Reichsautobahn, Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin 2021 (2nd edition), Erdöl. Ein Atlas der Petromoderne, co-authored with Alexander Klose, Matthes&Seitz Berlin 2020, English edition: Atlas of Petromodernity, punctumbooks Santa Barbara 2024. Oil. Schönheit und Schrecken des Erdölzeitalters, co-authored with Alexander Klose and Andreas Beitin (Ed.), publishing house of Buchhandlung Walther König in Cologne 2021 (extensive catalogue to accompany the eponymous exhibition at Kunstmusem Wolfsburg 2021/2022).