Out of Office

Summer may be the season of automated email replies and empty cubicles, but the machinery of bureaucracy never truly takes a holiday. While academics flee to conferences in sun-soaked cities and administrators finally use their accumulated leave, the institutional wheels keep turning—and so do we.

The first half of 2025 has brought an unexpectedly sharp edge to anti-bureaucratic discourse, with public service itself becoming a lightning rod in ways that would have seemed almost quaint just a few years ago. The topic of bureaucracy has morphed, even for us, from the object of  academic and aesthetic critical analysis into something more urgent, because it is politically weaponized. The speed and intensity of these attacks suggest we’re witnessing not just policy debates, but a fundamental reckoning with the very idea of institutional subjects, agency, and expertise. 

These developments had not yet transpired when we co-authored the introduction to volume 8 of Administory: Journal for the History of Public Administration / Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte themed “Administrative Cultures and Their Aesthetics” or they would certainly have given a different inflection to that piece. Available in Open Access, the volume includes 17 contributions in English and German, along with our introduction – co-authored with our fellow editor, Burkhardt Wolf – titled Looking Like an Administration: Towards an Aesthetic of Bureaucracy. 

From the beginning, our goal with this special issue was to bring together researchers from different fields interested in administration and the arts. This would seem a fairly uncomplicated matter, but we weren’t sure how many scholars were engaged in doing this type of research due to the lack of established international networks or contexts for such scholarship. And yet, our call reached many who were, unbeknownst to us, already working in this field, as well as authors whose interest was sparked by the theme. Contributions to the volume are loosely centered around the concept of administrative aesthetics, or, what it is that administration looks and feels like. The essays deal with a broad range of subjects, including civil service periodicals, Marx and Engels’ use of official statistics in their writings, bureaucracy and magic, bureaucracy-themed interactive art, historical and contemporary archival practices and much more.

We are delighted that this excellent research is now available online and we hope that these articles will generate further interest in the topic of administrative aesthetics,  provoking further conversations about administration and the arts. 

Here’s what else we’ve discovered since our last dispatch:

New publications

BOOK: Peter Plener, Burkhardt Wolf (eds.), Die Akte/n, J.B. Metzler, 2025. Open Access.

This edited volume explores the file or acta as a key medium through which administrative power, identity, and reality are constituted. Tracing their evolution from bundles and folders to digital data sets, the 28 essays examine how files connect writing systems with institutional processes, serving both bureaucratic accountability and historical documentation.

Far from being exclusive to administration, acta migrate into fields like education, medicine, politics, the military, business, and the arts—revealing a broad media history of bureaucratic inscription. The volume presents files as enduring media-technical innovations, essential to understanding the recursive logic of modern governance.

CHAPTER: Jérémie Ferrer-Bartomeu, “La figure du ministre ou le troisième corps du roi. Contribution à l’histoire des représentations et des matérialités politiques (Europe, première modernité)” in La Part de l’oeil, n° 39 – 2025. Dossier : Lire, décrire, interpréter. Louis Marin entre texte et image.

The chapter explores the concept of a “third body of the king” - the administrative body - alongside the traditional two bodies (natural and mystical) theorized by Ernst Kantorowicz. Through analysis of four political situations from mid-16th to late 17th century Europe, the author examines how the emerging administrative society composed of secretaries, diplomats, clerks, and bureaucrats developed its own forms of representation and legitimacy. Drawing on Louis Marin’s work on representation and Pierre Bourdieu's concept of “recognition,” Ferrer-Bartomeu argues that visual and textual discourses - from frescoes at the Escorial depicting couriers, to diplomatic paintings showing treaty negotiations, to ceremonial miniatures of court rituals - served to make visible and legitimate this new administrative power structure. The study demonstrates how this administrative body, distinct from both royal majesty and the organic political body of the kingdom, became essential to early modern state formation through its mastery of written communication and bureaucratic practices, ultimately constituting a third form of sovereign embodiment that materialized the “terrifying grandeur of the State.”

The author addresses the same topic in a recent interview hosted by Laurent Dehossay for the radio show Un Jour dans l’Histoire in June 2025.

ARTISTS’ BOOK: The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.), #46 Self-Institution / Terminology Audit

“Self-Institution/Terminology Audit is a collection of profiles and lexicons documenting artistic practices that operate as self-declared institutions. It examines the act of self-institution as both a conceptual and operational approach, focusing on how these practices structure themselves and engage with their contexts.

Initiated by the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.), this publication investigates artist offices, bureaus, departments, ministries, societies, centres, and other explicitly institutional invocations. The Terminology Audit reveals language and jargon unique to each practice. The case studies, currently active in the field, represent a broad range of approaches, including research-based, performance-driven, pragmatic, materially motivated, counter-institutional, esoteric, and absurd facsimiles of institutionhood.”

Book cover © O.J.A.I. and Set Margins

“The publication was conceptualized and introduced by Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly (O.J.A.I.), featuring an essay by Gary Farrelly, due diligence text by Andrea Knezović, and a responsorial note by Alicja Melzacka. Included self-instituted entities are: The Bureau of Melodramatic Research (BMR), The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.), Self Luminous Society, Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples G.E.S, Department of Ultimology, Minister of Cosmic People, Tac.ka Association, KOLXOZ, Pls, I’m Trying to Think Institute (PITTI), This Institute, Aurora-Rhoman Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics, AARS (Antwerp Artist Run School), The Letter Space Department (TLSD), Temporary Information Center (T.I.C.).”

ARTICLE: Alexandra Irimia, “Retorica anti-birocratică a populismului” [The Anti-Bureaucratic Rhetoric of Populism] in Scena 9, May 15, 2025.https://www.scena9.ro/article/birocratie-bugetari-george-simion-taieri-bugetare-milei-trump

The article examines the anti-bureaucratic rhetoric used by populist politicians, like a Romanian presidential candidate, who promised to fire 500,000 public employees, drawing parallels to similar promises by figures like Javier Milei in Argentina and Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative in the US. The author traces how bureaucracy has historically served as a convenient scapegoat for political frustrations, while warning that contemporary attacks on public administration often mask authoritarian agendas aimed at dismantling institutional checks on power rather than improving efficiency. Through analysis of examples like Berlin’s “Museum of Bureaucracy” (funded by business interests opposing environmental regulations), the piece reveals how anti-bureaucratic discourse is weaponized to serve corporate interests and political extremism. The article concludes that such rhetoric channels legitimate frustrations with administrative inefficiency toward destructive rather than reformative solutions, ultimately threatening the democratic foundations of public service and social infrastructure.

Events

PUBLIC LECTURE: Wolfgang Seibel (University of Konstanz) — Which crisis? On real and staged challenges of the administrative state [Welche Krise? Über reale und inszenierte Herausforderungen des Verwaltungsstaates]. April 3, 2025, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Cologne.

Public administration is characterized by ambivalent, functional, and potentially dysfunctional system characteristics. Crises typically arise when the administration’s self-corrective mechanisms are weakened or rendered ineffective by unfavorable constraints. This applies, on the one hand, to imbalances between tasks and resources, and, on the other, to accepted or even deliberately staged ignorance of system characteristics. This lecture examined these two key phenomena using theoretical considerations and empirical case studies. Following his lecture, Wolfgang Seibel engaged in discussion with sociologist Armin Nassehi.

ROUNDTABLE: Changing the Record: How people use(d) paperwork to make their world, May 19, 2025, Birbeck, University of London.

The event brought together scholars, activists, and archivists to examine how marginalized people strategically used bureaucracy and paperwork to protect themselves and create change, rather than simply being burdened by it. Participants explored how various groups—trade unions, employees, activists, refugee charities, decolonizing nations, and marginalized communities—deliberately created paper trails and official records to hold power accountable, establish legal precedents, navigate systems, and document their own histories. The discussion focused on how people across generations transformed imposed paperwork from a tool of oppression into an instrument of empowerment, using knowledge of bureaucratic systems to shape how they were treated and to enact change. The roundtable featured interdisciplinary conversation about these tactical approaches across different fields and historical periods.

WORKSHOPS, CONFERENCES, TALKS

• April 3, 2025: Alexandra Irimia presented the paper “Archive Fever and Other Symptoms of Bureaucratic Malaise: Pathologies of Public Office in 20th and 21st Century Dystopian Novels” at the workshop Dystopian Narratives and Stories about Illness, CAPONEU, Nicosia, Cyprus;

• May 20-23, 2025: Workshop Protokollarische Kulturen. Mitschriften der österreichischen Bürokratie – WEAVE project Bürographien. Administration after the Age of Bureaucracy, Vienna, Austria;

• June 1, 2025: Jonathan Foster and Alexandra Irimia presented the paper “Misplaced Personality: Foucault’s Lives of Infamous Men and Bureaucratic Modernism” at the ACLA Panel Varieties of the Impersonal (online);

• June 5, 2025: Alexandra Irimia presented the paper “Bureaucratic Fiction, Bureaucratic Scripts: Institutional Writing in The Palace of Dreams and The Beautiful Bureaucrat” at the workshop Acts of Writing: Cultural Practices, Knowledge Construction, Authorship, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany;

• June 5, 2025: Nadine Thielmann and Regina Göke from WU Vienna presented their study From Humor to Resistance: Analyzing Office Lore in Modern Workplaces in Bergen, Norway.

“This study explores the phenomenon of office lore (Hatch & Jones, 1997; Brednich, 2014), focusing on textual and visual artefacts like postcards, cartoons, and memes displayed by employees. These seemingly trivial items offer a bottom-up perspective on organisational culture and management, revealing how employees relate to their work environment and express attitudes toward office life. While research on office lore peaked between the 1970s and 1990s, with more research focusing on U.S. workplaces, our study fills a gap by examining contemporary German-speaking workplaces and analysing the messages of these artefacts in more depth.”

EXHIBITIONS

• March 20 - July 4, 2025: Poetry and Administration from the Archive of the Artists’ Association at Haus der Kunst e.V., Central Institute for Art History, Munich.

Exhibition Invitation

Closed to the public and still awaiting scientific attention, the archive contains sources from 1948 to the present: correspondence, minutes, documents on the purchase and sale of art objects and on loans to private collections and museums, photographs, posters, and catalogs on exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst since 1949. Eight artists present works that are situated between historical facts and artistic freedom in dialogue with documents and artifacts from the archive, which are being shown publicly for the first time and are accompanied by commentary.

• July 23 - August 2, 2025: Artministration Teil 1 Abs. (4): Kunst und Bürokratie, BKF — Büro für kuratorische Forschung c/o Galerie Nord | Kunstverein > Tiergarten, Berlin.

  For the exhibition Art and Bureaucracy at the BKF – Office for Curatorial Research, the selection jury, consisting of visitors and the BKF directors, selected 13 works from 104 submissions. The selected works, spanning painting and drawing, installation and video, photography, and sculpture, have been presented at the Office for Curatorial Research. All 104 submissions are archived and available for viewing in the space, awaiting future presentation opportunities.

• June 12 - September 14, 2025: Jupp Darchinger: Das Auge der Republik [The Eye of the Republic], LVR-Landesmuseum, Bonn.

  The exhibition presents snippets of West German bureaucracy from the 1970s, as captured by the Bonn-born press photographer Jupp Darchinger, who documented institutional activities in the government district of the former capital city.

  

  Photo from the exhibition. © J.H. Darchinger/Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

  Marking the centenary of legendary photojournalist Jupp Darchinger’s birth, the exhibition celebrates the photographer who captured the state bureaucracy of West Germany like no other, from the Adenauer era’s economic miracle to German reunification. The selection showcases both iconic portraits of figures like Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt alongside rarely seen works that reveal new dimensions of Darchinger’s visual universe. Developed in collaboration with the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, which preserves Darchinger’s estate.

  
  III. Interviews

  The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence gave an interview on liminal spaces and the bureaucratic imagination for CURRENTLY, the digital sketchbook of Current — Kunst und Urbaner Raum, Stuttgart.

  “CURRENT: The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (OJAI) operates as a bureaucratic para-intelligence agency. How does adopting this institutional persona influence your artistic approach? And what role does administrative language and structure play in your critical engagement with power structures?

  
  OJAI: For us, the institution is not a fixed building or bureaucratic apparatus, but a constructed entity—composed of improvised tools, procedures, and rituals of office-making. We stage our own form of authority, creating an illusion of continuity and control through naming, protocol, and performative conformity. Institutionalization is a way for us to make things visible. It allows us to assert the legitimacy of our research objects—tunnels, peripheries, disreputable buildings, infrastructural memory, and sonic archaeological fragments. These obsessions are activated and operationalized through an artistic logic.”

  IV. Featured Research Groups

• Bureaugraphies. Administration after the Age of Bureaucracy
  The project examines the purportedly post‑bureaucratic administrations of the German-speaking world—Germany, Switzerland, and Austria—through the lens of Max Weber’s concept of bureaucracy as rational, file-based decision-making infused with state authority. It argues that while reforms aimed at debureaucratization, streamlining, and efficiency may have reduced procedural red tape, they also dispersed formerly official bureaucratic practices into social and private realms. The concept of “bureaugraphies” captures these writing techniques and routines—once strictly administrative—that now permeate everyday life without being tethered to formal state power. Ultimately, the project traces how the reduction of bureaucratic routines paradoxically fuels the proliferation of bureaucratic practices across political, technical, aesthetic, and personal spheres.

• Kleine Souveränität - University of Kassel
  The project explores how both colonial and contemporary bureaucracies shape “micro-sovereignties”, envisioning the office as a contested terrain where power is enacted, state authority recedes, and neoliberal dynamics assert themselves. It bridges historical and literary perspectives—from colonial administrative tools like the relación under Philip II to Kafkaesque narratives and adaptations by Latin American authors such as Arlt, Onetti, Benedetti, and Saccomanno—to show how writing and bureaucracy converge in constructing authority. By tracing modern narratives of office life, the research illuminates how neoliberal policies have transformed corporate workspaces into scenes of privatized sovereignty. The research maps the office as both a bureaucratic structure and a literary setting—a site where power is represented, contested, and reinvented.

  
  V. Featured Artist

  Cologne-Based artist Céline Berger engages with contemporary work environments in a variety of forms and media that incorporate both visual and conceptual strategies (short films, installations, writing, workshops). Some of her most intriguing practices dissect the relation between artists and the business world, bringing to the fore seemingly mundane elements of office life: post-its, flipcharts, whiteboards, office attire. She shows how these elements intersect with systems of power, control, and identity, examining how the microstructures of office life shape our experiences and perceptions of authority.

  
  In essence, Berger’s engagement with office life is part of a broader artistic critique of how institutional structures penetrate personal space and shape cultural norms. Her works can also be seen as a reflection on how the office environment has been transformed since the turn of the century and how the aesthetic and emotional undercurrents of office culture play a significant role in defining modern life.

Summer’s slower pace offers something invaluable: the chance to step back and examine the latest developments around bureaucratic, anti-bureaucratic, and meta-bureaucratic discourse with the careful attention they deserve. The administrative machinery never really stops—it just gets quieter, which makes it easier to hear the interesting sounds it’s always been making. 

Until our next dispatch,

Bureaucritically,

Alexandra and Jonathan