SPUR MANIFESTO
Document: Manifesto of the Gruppe Spur in the english translation published in Break/Flow 1, 1996. The Spur Group went on to become the German section of the Situationist International until they got expelled in February 1962. This is their manifesto from 1958.
1. Today there is a promising Artistic Rearmament in contrast to Moral Rearmament. Europe is facing a great revolution, a unique cultural putsch.
2. Art is the last domain of freedom, and wil! defend it with every resource.
3, We are daring to raise our voice against the monstrous colossus the technological machine. We oppose the logical way of mind which has led to cultura! devastation. The automatic, functional attitude has led to stubborn mindlessness, to academicism, to the atom bomb.
4. The renewal of the world beyond democracy and communism will only come about through a restoration of individualism, not through the collective will.
5. In order to be created, culture must be destroyed.
6. Such terms as culture, truth, eternity, do not interest us artists. We have to be able to survive. The material and spiritual position of art is so desperate that a painter should not be expected to be obliging when he paints. Let the established do the obligatory.
7. Basic research is purely scholarly and practical research purely technical. Artistic research is free and has nothing to do with the scholastic nor with the technical. We oppose the present trend to turn art into a pseudo-science, an instrument of technological stupefication. Art draws from an instinct, from the elemental creative forces. These wild, unharnessed forces urge ever on to the creation of new, unexpected forms – much to the annoyance of all intellectual spectators.
8. Art is a resounding stroke of the gong, its lingering sound the raised voices of the imitators fading into thin air. Its transference into the technical deadens artistic strength.
9. Art has nothing to do with truth. Truth lies between entities. To want to be objective is one-sided. To be one-sided is pedantic and boring.
10. We are all-embracing.
11. It is all over, the tired generation, the angry one…Now is the turn of the kitsch generation. WE DEMAND KITSCH, DIRT, PRIMEVAL SLIME, THE DESERT. Art is the dung heap upon which kitsch grows. Kitsch is the daughter of art. The daughter is young and smells good, the mother is an ancient stinking hag. We just want one thing – to disseminate kitsch.
12. We demand ERROR. The Constructivists and the Communists have eliminated error and live in eternal truth. We are against truth, against happiness, against satisfaction, against the free conscience, against the fat stomach, against HARMONY. Error is the most glorious accomplishment of mankind! What is man here for? To add new error to errors of the past, no longer meet for him.
13. Instead-of abstract idealism we call for honest nihilism. The greatest crimes of man are committed in the names of Truth, Honesty, Progress, for a better future.
14. Abstract painting has become empty aestheticism, a playground for the lazy minded who seek an easy pretext for the chewing-over once again of long outdated truths.
15. Abstract painting is a HUNDREDFOLD MASTICATED PIECE OF CHEWING GUM stuck underneath the edge of the table. Today the Constructivists and the structuralist painters are trying to lick off this long dried up piece of chewing gum once again.
16. Abstraction has given us the commonplace of 4 dimensional space. The painting of the future is POLYDIMENSIONAL. Endless dimensions await us.
17. Art historians manufacture intellectual dinner conversations from every necessary spiritual revolution. WE SHALL SET AGAINST THIS OBJECTIVE NON-COMMITTALISM A MILITANT DICTATORSHIP OF THE SPIRIT.
18. It is not our fault that we can paint well. We even make efforts to do so. We are arrogant and eccentric. We scorn every definition.
19. WE ARE THE THIRD ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST WAVE.
WE ARE THE THIRD DADA WAVE.
WE ARE THE THIRD FUTURIST WAVE.
WE ARE THE THIRD SURREALIST WAVE
20. WE ARE THE THIRD WAVE. We are a sea of waves (SITUATIONISM)
21. It is only through us that the world can be cleared of its debris.
WE ARE THE PAINTERS OF THE FUTURE!
>SPUR 1958<
H.Prem H.P.Zimmer E.Eisch H.Sturm L.Fischer A.Jorn D.Rempt G.Britt G.Stadler
- Full text of the original German language version
- Wikipedia entry on Gruppe Spur (English / Deutsch)
- Table of Content of Break/Flow 1
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