CV
Since 06/2024
Research group leader innovation team A2 Chemistry in Transition at JTC.
Since 04/2016
Work with the cultural and curatorial research collective Beauty of Oil.
Since 01/2015
Freelance concept developer, curator, and publicist; founding of Office for Precarious Concepts and Undisciplinary Research.
12/2009 – 12/2014
Research associate in the program department of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, Halle: Head of the Fonds Neue Länder, program development, conception and management of artistically expanded discourse events.
2010
Doctorate in cultural and media studies with a thesis on the principle of the standardized container (first reviewer Prof. Bernhard Siegert, Bauhaus University Weimar, second reviewer Prof. David Gugerli, ETH Zurich).
01/2005 – 12/2007
Scholarship holder in the DFG Research Training Group “Medial Historiographies,” Bauhaus University Weimar, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, University of Erfurt.
10/2005 – 07/2009
Teaching responsibilities at the HfG Karlsruhe (Department of Architecture, together with Prof. Mueller von der Haegen), Anhalt University of Applied Sciences Dessau (Department of Integrated Design, in substitution for Prof. Joachim Krausse), Bauhaus University Weimar (Department of Media Culture).
09/2002 – 03/2004
Research assistant with curatorial responsibilities for the exhibition “10+5=God. The Power of Signs” at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
1998 – 2008
Freelance writer for Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Der Tagesspiegel (3-5/2002 internship in the arts section of Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung).
10/1995 – 08/2001
Master’s degree in cultural studies and philosophy, Humboldt University of Berlin and Free University of Berlin.
04/1991 – 07/1993
Studied law at Leibniz University Hannover.
10/1990 – 02/1991
Studied philosophy, Romance languages and history at Leibniz University Hannover.
Further information
Alexander Klose pursues projects at the intersection of cultural/technological research and curatorial/artistic practice. His main focus is on the mutual interpenetration of modern technologies and modern ways of life, worldviews, and mentalities. He completed his university education with a practical and philosophical exploration of cycling (Rasende Flaneure. Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte des Fahrradfahrens, Münster: LIT Verlag 2003). In the 2000s, inspired by a trip on a container ship, which he undertook as the cameraman for a documentary film, he intensively studied the principles of containerization and logistics, see www.containerwelt.info. As a research associate in the program department of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, he was responsible for advising and promoting civic cultural projects in the new federal states, while also developing and managing artistically expanded discourse formats such as “The Undead” (with Hannah Hurtzig, Kampnagel Hamburg, May 2010) and “As Darkness Falls. Theory und Practice of Self-Empowerment in the Age of Digital Control” (with Berliner Gazette, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin, January 2014). He remained active in Halle and the surrounding area through his collaborations with Werkleitz even after his time at the Federal Cultural Foundation, most recently with the exhibitions “My Precious” (Novalis Castle Oberwiederstedt, May/June 2023) and “Planetary Peasants” (Moritzburg Art Museum Halle, May-September 2025). Since 2015, he has been working primarily on new understandings of culture and nature in the context of the Anthropocene concept, and since early 2016, he has been focusing on the culture and history of “Petromodernity”: the era shaped by petroleum technologies and materialities. Together with cultural scientist Benjamin Steininger and speculative designer Bernd Hopfengärtner, he founded the research collective Beauty of Oil and curated the exhibition “OIL. Beauty and Horror of the Petroleum Age” (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, September 4, 2021 to January 9, 2022). The work of the JTC research team Chemistry in Transition focuses on the hitherto little-considered middle section of petro-modern productivity between exploration, extraction, and transport of raw materials on the one hand, and distribution and dissemination of fuels and consumer goods and their decomposition products on the other.
Publications (Selected)
Monographs
Atlas of Petromodernity (with Benjamin Steininger; translated into English by Ayça Türkoğlu), Goleta/Cal.: Punctum Books 2024 –> open access.
Erdöl. Ein Atlas der Petromoderne (with Benjamin Steininger), Berlin: Matthes&Seitz, Berlin: Matthes&Seitz 2020.
The Container Principle. How a Box Changes the Way We Think (ins Englische übersetzt von Charles Marcrum), Boston: MIT-Press 2015.
Das Containerprinzip. Wie eine Box unser Denken verändert, Hamburg: Mare Buchverlag 2009.
Rasende Flaneure. Eine Wahrnehmungsgeschichte des Fahrradfahrens, Münster 2003.
Editorships
Planetary Peasants. Agriculture, Art, Revolution (publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle), Leipzig: MMKoehn Verlag 2025.
My Precious (publication accompanying the exhibition of the same name at Novalis Castle in Oberwiederstedt), Halle: Werkleitz Gesellschaft 2023 (with Daniel Herrmann and Marlen Kaufmann).
“Erden. Naturphilosophische Brocken”, Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft No. 45, Vienna: Sonderzahl Verlag 2022 (with Ivo Gurschler and Andreas Hofbauer).
OIL. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age (exhibition catalog), Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Franz und Walther König 2021 (with Andreas Beitin and Benjamin Steininger).
Model and Ruin (exhibition catalog), Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag 2019 (with Werkleitz Medienkunstverein).
Container/Containment. Irdische Grenzen der Globalisierung, Tumult No. 38, 2011 (with Jörg Potthast).
Butis Butis (ed.), Goofy History. Fehler machen Geschichte, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2009 (editorial collective with Isabel Kranz, Jan Philip Müller, Nina Wiedemeyer, and others).
Butis Butis (ed.), Stehende Gewässer. Medien der Stagnation, Zurich-Berlin 2007 (editorial collective with Helga Lutz, Isabel Kranz, Nina Wiedemeyer, and others).
Articles
»Pflanzen zum Heilen und Berauschen«, in: Joela Jacobs, Isabel Kranz (Hg.), Pflanzen. Kulturwissenschaftliches Handbuch, Stuttgart: Metzler, will be published June 2026.
»Planetary Peasants«, in: The Laboratory Planet, No.6, Mai 2024, p.2/3.
»Ukraine. Auf den Grenzen der Petromoderne« (mit Benjamin Steininger), in: Dritte Natur 06, 1/2023, p. 7-39.
»Geister der Petromoderne« (mit Benjamin Steininger), in: Merkur Heft 890, 7/2023, p. 81-86.
»Im Seil«, in: Wahrsager No°5 2022, Das Seil von Strodehne, hg. von landmade, Strodehne 2022, p. 67-74.
»The Art of the Petrol Age: An Exploration« (with Benjamin Steininger), in: Andreas Beitin, Alexander Klose, Benjamin Steininger (Hg.), Oil. Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, (Exhib. cat.) Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Franz und Walther König, p. 28-65.
»Extraction-Destruction-Production. On the Contradictory Productivity of Oily Images«, in: Resolution Magazine (2021), Hot Pictures, hg. v. Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Giacomo Mercuriali und Laurens Otto, S. 17-28.
»Container as a mediating technology of organization«, in: Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology, and Organization Studies, edited by Timon Beyes, Robin Holt, and Claus Pias, Oxford 2019, S. 136-148.
»Im Bann der fossilen Vernunft« (mit Benjamin Steininger), in: Merkur Heft 835, 12/2018, S. 5-16. Also published in ZEIT 2.12.2018, accessable with commentaries here.
»Plastikzeit«, in: Andreas Hofbauer (Hg.), Tumult Nr. 42: Bleibende Steinzeit, Vienna: Sonderzahl Verlag 2018, p. 121-132.
»Container Love, and Fear«, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Technosphere Magazine, online, published 15.11.2016
»Pharmakologistik. Über den Transport von Wirkungen und Bildern«. In: Schönfeld,
Sarah, All You Can Feel (Exhib.cat.), Bielefeld 2016.
»Die Containerisierung des Passagiers«, in: Blätter für Technikgeschichte, Bd. 75/76,
2013/14, Mobilität, Wien 2014, p. 69-86.
»Who do you want to be today? Annäherungen an eine Theorie des Containersubjekts«, in: Insa Härtel/Olaf Knellessen (ed.), Das Motiv der Kästchenwahl. Container in Psychoanalyse, Kunst, Kultur, Göttingen 2012, p. 21-38.
»Das Containerprinzip«. In: Archplus, Nr.205, Service Architekturen, März 2012, p.62-69.
»Weltcontainer. Containerwelt«. In: Kraut. Magazin für angewandte Kultur, #3 (2011), Container, p. 5-7.
»Apokalypse oder Katastrophe?«. In: Frank Böckelmann/Ulrich van Loyen (Hg.), Tumult, Nr. 36, KataChoc. Vom Beutewert des Desasters, 2010, p. 39-45.
»Die doppelte Standardisierung – das Entstehen des Containersystems zwischen Land und See, zwischen Europa und den USA«. In: Arbeitskreis Verkehrsgeschichte der Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte (ed.): Standardisierung und Netzwerkeffekte im Verkehr (Veröfftl. der Beiträge zur Tagung am 16./17.5.08 in Nürnberg), Baden-Baden 2009.
»CSI – Stahlkisten der Pandora oder Wie wir lernten, die Bomben zu lieben«. In: Butis Butis (Hg.), Goofy History. Fehler machen Geschichte, Köln/ Weimar/ Wien 2009. The script on which the article is based can be accessed here.
»The Container Manifesto«. In: Homo Oeconomicus 25(2), 2008, p. 1-5.
»Kaleidoskopisch – Das Fahrrad um 1900 als optische Apparatur und Medium einer neuen, technisch gestützten Wahrnehmung«. In: Antje Stache (Hg.), Fahrrad – Person – Organismus. Zur Konstruktion menschlicher Körperlichkeit, Frankfurt/Main, Berlin, Bern u.a. 2008.
»Tod in der Badewanne (Barschel/Marat/Demand)«. In: Butis Butis (Hg.), Stehende Gewässer. Medien der Stagnation. Zürich-Berlin 2007, p. 163-169.
»Sturm im Wasserglas. Über Hans Haackes aquatische Echtzeitsysteme«. In: Ebda., p. 239 – 246.