Category: Events

The plethora of new materials in the petromodern era—refined fuels, ammunition, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, plastics—were fashioned as complex chemical-industrial products. Current proposals for an ecological and just transition moving away from fossil resources and other destructive forms of extractivism largely rest on the ‘green’ or ‘sustainable’ transformation of exactly these petromodern developments in chemical sciences and technology. However, despite its pivotal historical role in shaping the petromodern present, chemical technology has received little attention in petromodernity research.

With our panels we propose to read the programmatic Dresden call for “Situating energies” as a motivation to focus on the chemical sciences, technologies and infrastructures that provide energy and materials for all types of societal metabolisms— and on their social and cultural repercussions. In doing so, we investigate both the epistemologies behind chemical principles and technologies, as well as their geographical and historical situatedness—in our case in Central Europe, in Germany, in the former GDR, at the crossroads of historical experiences with different types of petromodernity: capitalist, NS, social-democratic, socialist, and post-Soviet.

Link to our full Call for Paper »The Chemistry of Energy« here

Link to the Call for Paper of »Petrocultures 2026 Dresden, Situating Energy« here

With speeches by Juri Rappsilber, Maria Andrea Mroginski, Matthias Driess, Peter Seeberger, and Benjamin Steininger, Cluster of Excellence UniSysCat celebrated its 18th anniversary at TU-Berlin.

Time, to recall the past of quite an era of outstanding catalysis research in Berlin since 2007 with UniCat and UniSysCat, and to also envision the future of a further transformation of chemistry and the respective role of industrial, chemical, and biochemical catalysis processes.

And high time for me, to warmly thank all UniSysCat-colleagues for their cooperation and generous support in the last seven years!

Alexander Klose at Roundtable in University Paris 1, Sorbonne on »Exhibition making in the age of fossil fuels – beyond the petrochemical«, Dec. 5 2025

How is the imperative of energy transition changing the art world? How are artists, curators, critics, conservators and restorers working towards a world without oil? To answer these questions, we intend to bring together artists, activists, curators, researchers and other art world actors in four cities in Atlantic countries with strong links to the history of oil: Lagos, Mexico City, New York and Paris. Over the course of four half-days, we propose to discuss across fields of activities and continents recent developments in contemporary art practices linked to ecological objectives, as well as the transformation of imaginary images of oil in the visual arts.

1st in a series of four international workshops, 5 december 2025, 14h Salle Vasari, INHA 

17h-18h / Roundtable 3 : Exhibition making in the age of fossil fuels – beyond the petrochemical/ Curater dans l’ère fossile – vers d’autres modèles

Chair : Lotte Arndt
Speakers : Anna Colin, Camille Richert (researchers and curators), Keren Detton (FRAC Grand Large Hauts-de-France director), Chaleur humaine, Triennale Art et Industrie de Dunkerque (2023) & Alexander Klose (researcher and curator) Research Collective Beauty of Oil

Find more information on the event in Paris as well as on the workshop series here.

It was a pleasure, and frankly also quite an honor, to deliver alongside leading chemists the only keynote lecture by a non-chemist at this big international event at Mülheim//Ruhr on May 5 2025.

These events show how important it is for petromodernity research from the cultural sciences to get in touch and to keep contact to the practitioners of chemistry innovation.

It is important for both sides, since it is us to deliver topics and keywords that chemists interact with their work without noticing, and that otherwise might have not be mentioned at such conferences such as »Anthropocene«, »petromodernity«, »chemical geography«, »chemical cultural theory«, »Chemiewende«, »Geoanthropology«…

To adjust a famous quote: Chemists are the ones that are changing the world in different ways, but it will still take something like philosophers to interpret.