• A clear, unmistakable position will help to find the right direction for one’s own course of action and will help to find one’s bearings within all the different positions.
• Only clear ideas will enable a person to measure, assess, modify and develop his or her own course of action.
• Only a clearly defined position will make it possible to specifically compare a course of action with other, differently oriented courses of action or ideas. Such comparisons are prerequisites for clearly focussed action in accordance with one’s own position and for working with this position (e.g. modifying it).

• A plethora of differences in positions within and attitudes towards art does exist, but constant efforts are made to level these differences.
• I speak out against the concealment of these differences and against any hastily reached consensus.
• I demand that artists clearly state their own positions in all their individual limitedness, since every seemingly natural and commonplace truth will invariably disintegrate and show its personal, temporal and subject-related limits, and these limits will, in turn, mark the individual positions. They confine the ideas, but at the same time they form the framework and the basis for any form of comparison and (self-) analysis. These limits are the basis and the starting point for any form of real change.
• Blurring the differences within one’s own position and the differences in comparison to other positions will lead to aimless wafting and zig-zagging courses of action.

• It makes no difference whether I’m satisfied with painting images reflecting my personal mental state, or whether I create works intended to make people happy, or whether I want to teach or educate people, or whether I want to involve people in my work. There are an unlimited number of positions. Conflicting positions do not necessarily have to exclude each other. They can be but do not have to be combined. It is the position that matters.
• Artists, art audiences, art critics, art theorists, art facilitators, art users, art consumers, art dealers, art collectors, art lovers, art managers, art haters, philistines …. Every person taking on more than just one characteristic will have a perspective on art that will be reflected in their position. This is a well-known and widely accepted fact, yet still people try to even out the existing differences.
• Everybody talks about interdependencies and conditionalities, while nobody names and considers the factors that determine his or her own actions.
• People who, out of misplaced modesty or a desire for harmony, refuse to take any position are ignoring the fact that they have a position, whether they like it or not, and are pulling the wool over their own eyes.

• Therefore: take a stance, provisional as it may be! Clearly define your positions and its limits, so that you can take action based on this position. This, in turn, will allow you to test and, if necessary, modify your course of action and your position.
• Sticking to one position is a conservative attitude. Working on and with the differences within a position or with other positions is the central point of it all. A position must be developed, which defines itself by its own limits.

Clarity! Don’t be hastily diplomatic! Be polemic! Clearly mark the limits!

Argue!

Silke Peters

(Translation: Georg Felix Harsch)