Artistic Research Does #7 - 'Tactics for Not Knowing' by Emma Cocker

This research exposition is conceived in conjunction with the publication, Artistic Research Does #7 (2023), which presents a translation of Emma Cocker’s essay ‘Tactics for Not Knowing: Preparing for the Unexpected’, originally published in Elizabeth Fisher and Rebecca Fortnum, (eds.) On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, (Black Dog Publishing, 2013). See https://i2ads.up.pt/publicacoes/artistic-research-does-7/ In addition to the translation and re-publication of the original text, the revised version of ‘Tactics for Not Knowing’ in Artistic Research Does #7 offers two further interventions in the form of annotations. In one column of margin notes, Cocker shares additional reflections, referring to some of her more recent artistic research projects and collaborations that continue to resonate with the concerns of the original text. In parallel, a second column of margin notes comprises the titles of additional pieces of contiguous writing drawn from two collections of Cocker’s writing, The Yes of the No (2016) and How Do You Do? (2023). Within this online version these margin notes include hyperlinks that enable the reader to access these different thought-fragments of writing. Artistic Research Does is edited by Catarina Almeida, André Alves. Artistic Research Does is published by i2ADS – Institute of Research in Art, Design and Society is a R&D unit based at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP), financed by the Portuguese agency Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

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VENTILATING MEANING

Hold back from reaching or grasping towards the object of enquiry through existing language — rather let it come. Quick is the wording of nascent wondering. Quick — swift or sudden, with promptness or immediacy, the capacity to move with speed. Yet quick can also mean living, alive or animate, characterised by the presence of life, from the root gwei- meaning to live. Living words to set in motion, for affecting understanding in experiential rather than only in conceptual terms. Mobilise — to render capable of movement; not fixed nor stabilised, but rather with the capacity to move. To stir; to shift; to excite, incite or awaken. To ventilate, to winnow or to fan. Aeration conceived as a nascent quality, not just the production of air. Lightness. Levity. Turning over. Rotation, inversion. Permutation. Repetition whisks up, froths. Agitation empties out. Exposure to wind separates as with the wheat from chaff. To wind, from vente — adventure at the limits of language. Beyond the self-expressivity of the speaking I. Towards a practice of collective voicing. Movement of words beyond the dialogic, beyond conversation. Passage. Relay. Circulation. Appropriation. Re-appropriation. Re-citing. Citing — again, again, an act of summoning. To call or rouse to action — towards meaning as the creation of the common.

From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)

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