Credits

Steffen Böhm's work touches at the boundaries of academia, art and activism. He has co-organised conferences and events on themes such as sound and silence, literature and organisation, art and organisation, and automobility all of which have been explorations of the possibilities of what can be called 'academic art activism'. In 2005 he co-organised the conference 'Capturing the Moving Mind', which brought together an eclectic international cohort of academics, artists and activists on the trans-Siberian train investigating and experiencing contemporary critiques of management, war and new forms of organising. Steffen is currently part of an international research project into the organisation and politics of alternative media. Here again research is not simply seen as an academic enquiry, but indeed as artistic and activist practice that actively engages alternative media organisations. He himself has been involved in various alternative publishing initiatives: he is co-founder and member of the editorial collective of the independent journal 'ephemera: theory & politics in organization' (http://www.ephemeraweb.org) and co-founder and co-editor of the independent press 'mayflybooks' (http://www.mayflybooks.org).

Steffen teaches and researches critical approaches to organisation and management studies at the University of Essex, UK. Engaging with contemporary critiques of global capitalism, he is interested in exposing the social, ecological, political, ethical and cultural limits of capitalist organising. His doctoral thesis was an investigation of the politics of organisation, exploring the organisational and political challenges faced by the global anti-capitalist movement. He is involved with the movement in particular through the social forum process and has been organising a number of Radical Theory Forum events at various European Social Forums as well as anti-G8 summits in recent years. His work has appeared in journals such as Mute, The Anomalist, Signs of the Times, ephemera, Tamara and Framework. He has published one book, Repositioning Organization Theory (Palgrave, 2006), and co-edited Against Automobility (Blackwell), which is forthcoming at the end of 2006. Many of his publications explore the possibilities of new ways of presentation. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's writing techniques, he has experimented with montages mixing both textual and photographic imagery. Steffen's montage 'Im-material Siberia' is his first attempt to extend this technique into the video medium. He can be contacted at steffen(at)essex.ac.uk.