Jeffrey Lee Benjamin

Research Concentrations

Art and Archaeology, Environment, Sound Studies

Regions

The Atmosphere, North America, North Atlantic

Biography

Jeff Benjamin is an artist and archaeologist working in the areas of sensitivity, language, industry and feeling. His research is concerned with the singular nature of the event of industrialization, as purposeful human activity, and the material forms and remnants of its perpetuation through sonic and haptic entrainment; repetition, trance, and habit. His work addresses the specific archaeological traces of early sensory responses to industry, histories of perception, synaesthetic responses to materials and technological processes, ecological/industrial synthesis, heraldic sonic forms, horizontalism, and praxis. His work draws from disparate traditions—literature, art, philosophy and the everyday—and he seeks to explore (and create) open pathways between archaeological and artistic expression through their shared effort to contend with the challenge of form and formlessness.

Education

Columbia University, MPhil in Anthropology, 2017
Michigan Technological University, MS, 2013
St. Olaf College, BA, 1988

2020. "The Past Above Us," in "Archaeology and Analogy," Interarchaeologia 6. The Eighth Baltic Archaeological Seminar. Edited by Marko Marila, Marja Ahola, Kristiina Mannermaa and Mika Lavento.

2019. "Remembered into Place" in "Routledge Handbook of Landscape and Memory," edited by Hilary Orange, Sarah de Nardi, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Danielle Drozdzewski, and Steven High. New York: Routledge.

2018. "An Archaeology of Air." In Digging for Words: Archaeolinguistic case studies from the XV Nordic TAG Conference held at the University of Copenhagen,16-18 April 2015, edited by Rune Iversen and Guus Kroonen, 39-45. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports Oxford Ltd.

2018b. Coauthor with Matt Edgeworth. "Chicago River as Hyperobject." In Rivers of the Anthropocene, edited by Jason Kelly, Philip Scarvino, Helen Berry, James Syvitski, and Michel Maybeck, 162-176. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2018c. "Human-Plant Mutualism in the Industrial Built Environment." In Pinsapo 2: 32-41.

2016. "The Repeated Tone of Civilization." In Memory, Space, Sound, edited by Johannes Brusila, Bruce Johnson, and John Richardson, 185-200. Bristol: Intellect Books.

2015. "Listening to Industrial Silence: Sound as Artifact." In Reanimating Industrial Spaces, edited by Hilary Orange, 108-124. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.

2014. “The Center for the Study of the Relationship Between Words and Stones.” In archaeolog: all things archaeological, edited by Christopher
Witmore.

2014b. “The Ever-New Then: On the Materialization of Historic Sound Forms." In Sounds Like Theory: XII Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group Meeting in Oulu 25.-28.4.2012, edited by Janne Ikäheimo, Anna-Kaisa Salmi, and Tiina Äikäs, 111-120. Helsinki: Archaeological Society of Finland.

2014c. "Industrial Sonifact and the Soundscape of the Anthropocene." Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 1, no. 1: 119-122.