Superfictions and adventurism: The art in everyday life

 In November 1989, I attended the Cologne Art Fair. As I walked around the maze of art fair booths, the Berlin Wall was being demolished, hammer‑blow, by hammer‑blow. Across Germany, Europe, and the world, there was a feeling of excitement that I haven’t experienced before or since. “New Beginnings Are In The Offing”, as Joseph Beuys once wrote across a photo‑portrait. How the world hasn’t changed since then, as we once more consider the threat of nuclear strikes and occupy a world fraught by new global terrorist threats. But back then, it did seem like a new beginning. Just as, fifteen years earlier, the end of the Vietnam War had, to my generation, appeared to mark a step back from the edge. One of the things we didn’t see coming was neoliberalism and the rise of the super-rich. And here I was, in 1989, surrounded by the nascent super-rich, because Cologne was the world’s leading art fair at the time. There were Richters to the left, and Warhols to the right …