The same work can become many different things

Let’s start with one of the forms you developed in Lesson 1:
Taking pictures + listening to the forest.
You described it as repeatedly returning to a small area of forest, taking photographs, listening, and observing how your gaze changes over time.
Now imagine positioning exactly the same activity in four different ways.
  • as a healing experience
A slow photographic practice in nature for reconnecting with yourself, reducing stress, and developing greater inner presence.
  • as personal development
A process using repeated observation and photography to become more conscious of habitual ways of seeing and relating to the environment.
  • as immersive multisensory experience
A guided encounter with forest, sound, silence, photography, duration, and attention.
  • as artistic research / performance
A repeated photographic action investigating how perception changes through return, duration, listening, and the accumulation of images.

The activity could remain almost identical.
But everything around it changes.
Who becomes interested.
What language you use.
Where it can happen.
Who might invite you.
What participants expect.
What partners make sense.
What funding you might approach.
How much it could cost.
Even what people believe they are coming for.
This is positioning.

positioning is a choice
There is no objectively correct position hiding inside the work.
You choose.
And that choice depends partly on what you want.
You could position the forest work as healing.
But perhaps you have absolutely no interest in working in the wellness field.
Then it would be a bad position for you, even if the activity could legitimately be described that way.
You could position your repeated-place photography course as personal development.
Perhaps participants would indeed learn something about themselves.
But if what interests you is photographic language, positioning it around self-development could attract people looking for something you do not actually want to provide.
The opposite can happen too.
Perhaps you want to work with artists developing their visual language, but you describe the course simply as:
Photography course in nature.
You may attract people looking for camera technique, composition, or landscape photography.
The work is not badly designed.
The position is unclear.
And when positioning is unclear, communication starts compensating.
You explain more.
You add paragraphs.
You try to make every nuance visible.
You clarify what you meant.
You justify.
This is particularly relevant to something you told me during our conversation: that you can develop and densify ideas very easily, but shortening and summarizing feels much harder.
Positioning can help with this.
Because you do not need to communicate the whole complexity every time.
First you decide:
Which side of the work am I putting forward here?
Then communication becomes selection rather than reduction.

positioning determines what follows
Imagine we position your forest work as artistic research.
Then later we might naturally ask:
Where could artistic research circulate?
Residencies?
Photobook contexts?
Exhibitions?
Artist-run spaces?
Research programs?
We might communicate through images, process notes, documentation, publications.
We might speak about:
repetition, perception, listening, duration, photographic language.
Now position exactly the same work as a wellbeing retreat.
Suddenly we are asking completely different questions.
What happens to participants?
How long do they stay?
How do they feel afterward?
What kind of accommodation is needed?
Who facilitates?
What kind of safety and care is offered?
How much do participants pay?
The work enters another economy.
Another audience.
Another language.
Another ethical contract.
This is why positioning comes early in Condition Building.
Before pricing.
Before place.
Before audience.
Before promotion.
Because all of those decisions depend on what you have decided the work is in relation to the world around it.

EXERCISE 1 — CHANGE THE POSITION

    ​Take each of your three selected forms:
    1.Workshop + poetry + photobook dummy
    2.Photography course + repeated visits to one place + photobook dummy
    3.Taking pictures + listening to the forest
    For each one, imagine three radically different positions.
    For example:
    education
    artistic research
    personal development
    performance
    publishing
    wellbeing
    participatory art
    photographic training
    artist development
    immersive experience
    Do not ask yet which one is correct.
    For each position, write briefly on a paper:
    What would I call it?
    Who would probably become interested?
    What would they expect from it?
    What language would I naturally use?
    Notice how much changes even when the basic activity stays similar.

    ​positioning is also exclusion
    ​    Choosing one position means not foregrounding others.
    This can feel uncomfortable.
    Artists often want to preserve every possible reading.
    But if everything is equally foregrounded, nobody knows how to enter.
    Imagine describing your poetry + photobook workshop simultaneously as:
    photography education,
    poetic research,
    creative writing,
    personal development,
    artist-book practice,
    self-expression,
    experimental pedagogy,
    and embodied learning.
    Perhaps all of these can be defended.
    But together they do not necessarily create more richness.
    They can create noise.
    Positioning asks:
    Which aspect needs to lead?
    Others can remain inside the work.
    They simply do not all need to stand at the entrance.

    EXERCISE 2 — CHOOSE YOUR POSITION

    Return to the different possibilities you generated.
    For each of your three forms, choose one primary position.
    Then complete:
    I choose to position this as...
    I do not want to position it primarily as...
    Because...
    This last sentence matters.
    Positioning should be conscious.
    ​Be specific.
    For example:
    This is a photography course, but it is not primarily about learning photographic technique.
    This is a photobook workshop, but it is not about decorating photographs with poetry.
    This is a photographic practice in a forest, but it is not nature photography in the conventional sense.
    Continue until the contour becomes clearer.
    Then ask:
    What misunderstanding do I particularly want to avoid?
    Sometimes positioning becomes much clearer when we know what we do not want the work to be mistaken for.

    ​    your three forms may occupy different positions
    ​    Do not force them into one category just because they come from the same practice.
    Your poetry + photobook workshop may become:
    photobook / artistic education
    Your repeated-place course may become:
    artist development through photography
    Your forest work may remain:
    artistic research
    That is completely coherent.
    A practice can contain different forms with different functions.
    One can generate artistic research.
    Another can generate income.
    Another can create encounters with participants.
    Another can circulate as an object.
    What matters is understanding the difference.

    EXERCISE 3 — YOUR POSITIONING CARDS

    Create one short card for each form.
    For example:
    artistic research
    photobook education
    artist development
    performance
    publishing
    Name one or two nearby positions you deliberately do not want to lead with.
    ​Not a demographic profile. What kind of person arrives because of this position?
    What contract does your positioning create?
    ​Choose five words or expressions that feel natural to this position.
    Choose words that would attract the wrong expectations.
    one final question
    ​    Look at the three cards together.
    Ask:
    If these three forms became successful exactly as I have positioned them, would I like the artistic life they would create for me?
    This is important.
    A position does not only attract an audience.
    It creates consequences.
    If you position yourself as an educator and it works, people will ask you to teach.
    If you position yourself as a mentor and it works, people will ask for your attention one-to-one.
    If you position something as healing, people may arrive carrying needs related to healing.
    If you position yourself through artistic research, you may enter slower and more institutionally dependent ecosystems.
    None is better.
    The question is:
    Which conditions do you actually want to build?
    Positioning is not about finding the perfect label.
    It is deciding which door you want to open, knowing that different doors bring different people into the room.

    WHO IS ALREADY NEARBY?

    Positioning also requires looking outward.
    Research 3–5 artists, photographers, photobook makers, educators, schools, or projects that feel close to what you are developing.
    They do not need to resemble your whole practice.
    One may be relevant because of their approach to sequencing.
    Another because of repetition.
    Another because of their pedagogy.
    Another because of the relationship between text and image.
    For each reference, write:
    What feels close?
    What feels different?
    Do not ask yet how to be more original.
    First understand the landscape you are entering.