Benjamin Steininger is a cultural and media theorist, historian of science, and curator. He is conducting postdoctoral research in the Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat at the Technische Universität Berlin and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. His main research fields are the history and theory of industrial catalysis in the Anthropocene, history and theory of fossil resources in modernity and in the Anthropocene, and a critique of fossil reason. Since 2012 has been a regular contributor to HKW’s Anthropocene projects, such as A Matter Theater (2014), 1948 unbound (2017), and Mississippi. An Anthropocene River (2019). In 2016, Steininger founded the research collective Beauty of Oil together with Alexander Klose. They published the book Erdöl. Ein Atlas der Petromoderne (2020) and curated the exhibition Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (2021). In June 2022 Petro-Melancholie. Das Erdölzeitalter im Spiegel der Kunst, a film about their project by Matthias Frick, will be broadcast on Arte.