What made Cologne one of Europe’s most magnetic art cities — and what remains of that energy today?

Recorded live at ART COLOGNE 2025, this panel brings together leading voices who shaped and chronicled that era and continue to define the field today: Isabelle Graw, Diedrich Diederichsen, Andrea Fraser, Christian Nagel, and Monika Sprüth, moderated by Hannes Loichinger.

The conversation revisits the city’s rise as a cultural powerhouse in the 1990s — a scene marked by experimentation, discourse, and bold gallery movements — and reflects on how those foundations reverberate in the present.

How has the ecosystem of artists, collectors, and institutions shifted since then? What does Cologne’s story reveal about the evolution of European art hubs — and about the forces that sustain them?

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to examine how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

What makes a good gallerist? Vision, loyalty, risk — or something else entirely?

In this eighth episode, Micaela Dixon speaks with Daniel Hug, Director of ART COLOGNE and board member of the Moholy-Nagy Foundation, about the enduring “myth” of the good gallerist — and what it reveals about the shifting ethics, ambitions, and responsibilities of the art world.

Drawing on his own path from gallerist to fair director, Hug reflects on the gallery as a fragile ecosystem — part sanctuary, part stage — and on how its moral and cultural purpose has evolved in an era of globalisation, speculation, and speed. And as the conversation unfolds, Cologne itself comes into focus: an art city undergoing renewal, where new energy and vision are transforming both the local and international landscape.

With his signature mix of candour and insight, Hug asks: what does it mean today to believe in artists, in art, and in the work of shaping context?

💬 “The myth of the good gallerist is powerful because it speaks to belief — belief in art, in artists, and in what art can still do.” — Daniel Hug

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to examine how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

In this episode, art historian and critic Tom McDonough (Binghamton University / Texte zur Kunst contributing editor) joins Micaela Dixon to discuss the politics of the image — and the legacies of critical theory in an era of visual overproduction.

Together, they explore how artistic and journalistic practices have absorbed and transformed concepts from thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord, and what remains of the avant-garde’s visual strategies today. The conversation also reflects on McDonough’s long engagement with institutional critique, the Situationist International, and the ways in which contemporary art continues to negotiate the space between aesthetics, activism, and spectacle.

A dense yet lucid exchange on what images do — how they act, circulate, and shape our understanding of the world.

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to examine how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

In this sixth episode, Micaela Dixon speaks with curator and writer Alicja Melzacka about the intersections between poetry and exhibition-making. Together, they explore how rhythm, language, and emotional charge can shape the experience of art — and how poetic thinking can expand the curatorial field.

Melzacka reflects on her recent projects, the influence of literature on her approach to exhibitions, and the challenge of making the ephemeral legible within institutional contexts. The conversation moves between the page and the gallery, between words and images, tracing the quiet power of poetry in shaping how we see and feel.

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to examine how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

Tara Heffernan: The Return of the Badaud

Art critic Tara Heffernan discusses the reappearance of the 19th-century badaud — the idle onlooker, the fascinated observer of modern life — in today’s art world.

In conversation with Micaela Dixon, Heffernan reflects on the emergence of new forms of art journalism and the shifting landscape of criticism in what she defines as a time of “no posterity.” Together, they explore the state of the avant-garde, the tensions between attention and distraction, and how social reportage and immediacy are reshaping the position of the critic.

A thoughtful dialogue on the future of art writing — and on what it means to look, linger, and record in an age of relentless now.

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to examine how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

In this fourth episode, we visit the Berlin studio of painter Tamina Amadyar to explore her distinct approach to colour, gesture, and space. Speaking with host Micaela Dixon, Amadyar reflects on how her work balances landscape and abstraction, intuition and control — and how her practice has evolved since her studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Together, they discuss the emotional and physical dimensions of painting, the role of rhythm and scale, and the broader tendencies shaping contemporary art today.

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with TEXTE ZUR KUNST, bringing together artists, curators, writers, and thinkers to consider how art responds to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

What role can museums play in a time of uncertainty, conflict, and change?

In this episode, Manuel Borja-Villel – curator, writer, and former Director of the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid) – reflects on the museum as a living institution: a space for memory, critique, and collective imagination.

“A museum should not only preserve objects, but also open time – for dialogue, for doubt, for the unexpected.”

FAIR ENOUGH is the podcast series by ART COLOGNE and TEXTE ZUR KUNST, exploring how art and its institutions respond to the urgencies of our time.

Season 1 marks TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary with the theme: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

What makes a bad review — and why do we need them?

In this episode of FAIR ENOUGH, presented by ART COLOGNE in collaboration with Texte zur Kunst, together with Anna Sinofzik (senior editor at Texte zur Kunst), host Micaela Dixon dives into the complex world of art criticism. Together with her guests, she explores the cultural role of negative reviews: when they’re justified, when they miss the mark, and what they reveal about power, taste, and accountability in today’s art world.

Joining the conversation are:

Criticism is an art form in itself — one that balances sharp insight with vulnerability and responsibility. How does the tone of critique shape the reputation of artists, institutions, and fairs? And what happens when criticism itself becomes a form of performance?

Expect honesty, humour, and a few uncomfortable truths about the art world’s love-hate relationship with critique.

FAIR ENOUGH is a podcast by ART COLOGNE & TEXTE ZUR KUNST, exploring how art and institutions respond to the urgencies of our times.

Season 1 takes up TEXTE ZUR KUNST’s 35th anniversary motto: There Is No Art Without Criticism.

This episode features a conversation with literary theorist Anna Kornbluh, author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (VERSO, 2024). We discuss her ideas on the cultural style of immediacy and its effects on visual art, what she identifies as the current period of art history, and her argument about the conditions that led to the rise of auto-fiction and the single-person narrative in contemporary writing.

In 2025, she was ranked number nine on the Art Review Power 100 list. Her recent essays have explored topics such as infrastructure cinema, the death drive, solidarity, and feminist abstraction. She is the author of Immediacy or the Style of Too Late Capitalism, published by Verso Books in 2024. Currently, Kornbluh is working on two forthcoming books. The first, Climate Counter-Aesthetics, argues for forms that can test prevailing ecological artworks and counter eco-critical paradigms. And the second, Good Enough Art, offers a theory of mid-aesthetics in the context of disappearing middle-class economics, a topic discussed in this episode.