1989. The Wall had come down and Cologne had lost its status as art metropolis, for Berlin was to become Germany’s capital once more; the art market went from gold rush to financial crisis, the 1990s had begun. Nonetheless and perhaps precisely because of the crisis: In the 1990s, Cologne “was the best place to be” or so claimed artist Josef Strau in his 2006 essay “The Non-Productive Attitude”.

For this year’s opulently illustrated journey back in time the documentary has set its sights on Cologne’s art scene in the 1990s. The editor frequents the people and events that built trans-European and trans-Atlantic bridges and laid the programmatic foundations for art today – and recaptures the era of artistic self-reflection obtained in occasionally hard pub sessions, context art and institutional critique.