Stefan was born in London after the second world war, of displaced working-class parents. He grew up in the suburb of Shepperton and studied architecture at Portsmouth before joining the Scratch Orchestra. He is the author of three Survival Scrapbooks: Shelter, Food, and Energy, which were published in the UK and US. While at college he ran the Portsmouth Arts Workshop after being inspired by the Drury Lane Arts Lab and came in contact with leading experimental artists of the day. He then researched the elements of human ability whilst working with New Dance Collective and wrote for their magazine ‘New Dance’. (‘Sense Think Act’ is published as a Kindle edition on 7/1/16)
During the 1980s he became a conventional artist moving from Mail art to drawing, printmaking and performance art. He was a founder member of the Brixton Artists Collective and gallery from 1983 -1987. Towards the end of the 1980s his work took a literary and theoretical turn in relation to identity politics. This resulted in: organising ‘Working Press: books by and about working class artists’ with Graham Harwood and writing three books on class and art; and co-curating a series of exhibitions with ‘Bigos: artists of Polish Origin’ that were supported by the Arts Council.
At the beginning of the 1990s he had the chance to build his own house in Kennington, London, as part of a self-build co-op. he took an MA in Time-based Media to train in digital media skills. This was followed by a doctorate at the RCA 1997 – 2002 in which he attempted to evaluate his experience of artists collectives with a participant study of Exploding Cinema. At the same time he produced a series of DVD video collections on culture and democracy, publishing them after 2002. He got a job teaching on an MA Visual Culture at Westminster University and then joined the Mute Magazine editorial team. This led to a variety of articles and blogs including the collaborative Agit Disco project, which became a book in 2012, and is ongoing as a performance.
Since his doctoral research he has been activating the archives of my past collective activities. These have now been acquired by major public archives including: BFI Special Collections, National Art Library at the V&A, Tate Archive, University of the Creative Arts in Farnham, University of Dundee Archive and the Museum of London.
He has also issued his current and past work as ebooks and has been enjoying adding full colour illustrations to old black and white text and seeing how books and pamphlets can work on smartphones.