Afterall is a research and publishing organisation based in London and Los Angeles. Since 1999, Afterall has produced a semiannual critical journal of art, context, and inquiry that aims to give prominence to the work of artists and its effect on a wider cultural and political debate. Afterall is now introducing Afterall Books to complement the journal and present further research into the social and theoretical context of contemporary art practice. These beautifully produced and richly illustrated publications present critical analysis of contemporary artists’ ideas and intentions and consider the impact and ongoing influence of the works they produce. This is an illustrated study of one of Ilya Kabakov’s most fantastic installations. The fictitious hero of this 1984 installation is a lonely dreamer who develops an impossible project: to fly alone in cosmic space. But, this dream is also an individual appropriation of a collective Soviet project and the official Soviet propaganda connected to it. Having built a makeshift slingshot, the hero apparently flies through the ceiling of his shabby room and vanishes into space. The miserable room and the primitive slingshot suggest the reality behind the Soviet Utopia, in which where cosmic vision and the political project of the Communist revolution are seen as indissoluble. The Man who Flew into Space from His Apartment also raises questions of authorship in modernity. All of Kabakov’s work is made in the name of other, fictitious artists. This reveals a hidden rule of the modern art system: only an artist who doesn’t want to be an artist or who doesn’t even know that he is an artist is a real artist - just as only an artwork that does not look like an artwork is a real artwork. The installation is a narrative, the documentation of a fictitious event.