Cologne announcements: Avanti at Otto Schweins. Renee Green at Christian Nagel. Matti Braun at Luis Campana. Daniel Buchholz.

letter from cologne by Stefan Roemer Now that the dust has settled from our city's biggest annual art event, Art Cologne (Nov. 10-17, 1996), we can see whether the 30th International Art Fair-- "Art of the 20th Century," as it was titled, has helped or hurt Cologne in its battle to remain Germany's leading "art city." In recent years, Berlin has asserted a cultural importance that parallels its new political status as the capital of a united Germany. Many art dealers and artists have left Cologne for Berlin in the last three years. And Art Cologne has been ill-fated in recent years. After the last fair the national association of German galleries split up. A group of younger galleries, including the founders of UNFAIR (an alternative art fair, pursued for two years from 1992 to '93, that was designed "to establish new concepts of presentation"), finally rejected the traditional fair framework, claiming that it was hypocritical and obsolete. Whereas during the UNFAIR hundreds of different events were held in conjunction with the main exhibition, these alternative events do not take place today. This year the Cologne Art Fair took place a week after Berlin's new art fair European Art Forum [see Berlin Art Diary]. As far as the art market goes, Berlin's rise may be little more than wishful thinking at present. Word was that most of the buying there was done by collectors from the Rhineland. And you have to remember that the organizers of the European Art Forum (who included former founders of the UNFAIR) were galleries from Cologne. They all presented special shows during the Art Cologne in their own spaces--an impressive and long list that includes Inge Becker, Frank M. Berndt, Gasser & Grunert, Birgitt Ihsen, Johnen & Schöttle, Rudolf Kicken, Philomene Magers, Christian Nagel, Reckermann, Schipper & Krome, Sabine Schmidt, Monika Sprüth and Lutz Teutloff. According to Cologne galleries, the art- market crisis of the late `80s and early `90s has passed, and now the market is healthier than ever. But who can tell for sure? To my eye it was only Polke-pieces of every size and price that were accompanied by red dots at the Cologne fair. At any rate, in German galleries photography still figures centrally, in a miniboom that is now about three years old. Nan Goldin's bohemian expressionism, Wolfgang Tillmanns' studies of youth culture and fashion, Ines van Lamsweerdes' computer manipulated borgs, even Hilla and Bernd Becher's 30-year-old program of documenting industrial architecture--all remain very popular with buyers. In addition site-specific installations spring up in different guises all over the place. For example, in Gallery Wohnmaschine's "Foerderkojen"--spaces at the fair given to new artists to do with as they wished--the artist Gunda Foerster just styled the cube in a way that unfortunately subverted the concept of site-specificity. Foester painted the walls in different colours and covered them with colored gauze, effecting her special trademark light. Ordinarily the space is reserved exclusively for an individual artist, but in this case the gallerist covered the walls with work by other artists destroying Foerster's atmosphere. Installations at Cologne galleries were certainly much more interesting than those at fair itself. Barbara Bloom showed selections from her "Pictures from the Floating World" series at Sabine Schmidt. This work of Bloom's, which is concerned with gender problematics in representation, features miniature erotic Japanese etchings on pieces of rice, presented in display cases with magnifying glasses for viewing. At Christian Nagel was another U.S. artist, Renee Green, with the installation "Transfer/Uebertragen," a smaller version of an exhibition simultaneously presented in New York historicizing Robert Smithson's work in relation to the students killed at Kent State University in Ohio [see Reviews]. At Buchholz Gallery, codirectors Daniel Buchholz and Christopher Mueller organized a series of exhibitions, films and events in a program continuing into early 1997, designed to break with traditional habits of gallery presentation. Still another project expressive of a strong effort to explore new concepts of presentation was mounted by the artist Stephan Dillemuth, who had run the celebrated experimental exhibition space Friesenwall two years ago (with Joseph Strau). Dillemuth exhibited a satirical performance that was a reflection on contemporary art production as no- production: in an imaginary dialog with his son in the year 2030, he ironically described the situation of the 1990 art scene, using all the phrases regarding collective art practices and institutional critique as they are presently circulating in current German art discourse. The search for new formats is also reflected this year in the tendency to make total environments--organizing late-night parties in conjunction with daytime exhibitions, for instance. At Lukas & Hoffmann Gallery, which mounted a series of shows that seemed more like ambient-techno music environments than art exhibitions, the practice has evolved to include gallery music labels and party services. But including "relaxation" as part of cultural representation strikes me as problematic. After all, the trend of artists dj-ing as a "new" art practice with all its emphasis on fun culture raises the question whether we currently experience a pervasive decline of theoretical art discourse. In this sense the most interesting event organized in conjunction with the Cologne fair was "Housing" (Oct. 4 - Nov. 12, 1996). Students at Cologne's Academy of Media Art organized an exhibition and panel series on provocative topics such as "the end of the art market," "how to survive in the art world" and "art's relation to recent social-security cuts enacted by the conservative German government." (Judith Rutzika, one of the organizers of "Housing," has extensive experience with organizing big techno-events.) With "Housing," for once, art galleries served as the site for critical displays on broader cultural developments in Germany. For example the symposium "minus '96" (Nov. 25. - 27, 1996), which was a follow-up to last year's alternative fair "Messe 2 o.k." in Cologne, happened in a space which was built in the Weimar Republic in Berlin. "Leftist cultural producers" met for discussions primarily on two topics: How can alternative forms of critical art distribution be built up? And how is it possible to organize a week of action against the big cities efforts to "clean" the public sphere of homeless people, unruly kids and drug addicts? By this light the installation of New York artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, who is usually intimately associated with contextual art discourse, struck me as cynical. Tiravanija basically installed his New York apartment in the Cologne Kunstverein as "a private/common space, open 24 hours a day, where everybody can live." This gesture, according to the artist, paraphrases the impossibility of producing art in the face of an overproduction of art and tries to level the differences between life and art. Apart from its being a typically '70s art approach, Tiravanija's project has many troublesome implications, especially in light of the fact that homeless people are of course not invited to stay and that Tiravanija received a stipend of more than $100,000 (DM 175,000) from a Cologne-based life insurance company for living half a year in Cologne. This exhibition continues the series of controversial and poorly thought-out events in this institution under the director Udo Kittelmann. It is in smaller cultural (not to say subcultural) settings that the interesting things go on. Last week the cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen presented his new book, called Political Correctness, about the transformations of the concept from U.S. to Germany in view of the neo-fascist upsurge. Also appearing was the anthology Mainstream of the Minorities, a collection of essays on how the politics of difference has effected pop culture, a topic that has been neglected in Germany. These subjects are also addressed by the German music mag Spex, which recruits leading Cologne intellectuals as commentators. The art scene and the Spex posse came together at a publication party at the Schmuckkaestchen, a familiar jazz and house-music club. Highlight of late November was a talk at Cologne University by October editor Jonathan Crary, introducing the German translation of his book Techniques of the Observer and also previewing his new book, which hasn't yet been published. Crary's detailed investigation of the 19th-century foundations and practices of visuality is fascinating, and of considerable interest to current debates on art and culture in Germany. I am also looking forward to visiting the big Magritte show that recently opened in Dusseldorf. It includes work by Barbara Bloom, Marcel Broodthaers, Robert Gober, Joseph Kosuth and Elaine Sturtevant as part of a focus on specific aspects of the reception of Magritte's work by contemporary artists. One last point: I just saw director David Cronenberg's not-very-surprising film of J.G. Ballard's book Crash, a spaced-out landmark of dystopian science fiction. Ballard's early '70s machine fetish, which inspired artists from Richard Prince on, is a symphony of car-engine-sound poetics, drug use, the smell of hot wheels and burning sexual liquids splashed all over the highways. The translation of "traffic" with the German term "verkehr" produced an additional Ballardian pun, since the German term also means "sexual intercourse." Whatever its faults, the Cronenberg film was more pleasurable than the Julian name- dropping Schnabel special performance at the Cologne premiere of Basquiat. In his introductory remarks it seemed that he mentioned every artist or musician in Cologne that he had ever met. The most interesting point about the film, which didn't seem too bad from a distance, is that Schnabel's survival is his new capital--as a survivor of the `80s, he can rewrite his own (his)story. I like David Bowie in his glorious Warhol-metamorphosis and I like Dennis Hopper, who is absolutely amazing as Zurich art dealer Bruno Bischofberger. STEFAN ROEMER is a German critic and art historian.