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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ACTS OF INVOCATION

Verbal — relating to verbs, that part of speech that expresses action. Alternatively, verbal as a concern for words; or pressured further, someone who deals with words not things. Words or things — a choice made, decision of allegiance. Yet words can be activated experimentally, for modifying and shaping the relations between things. Liberate the relation between cause and effect — subject not just agent of action but also its patient, acted upon or affected as much as affecting. Between activity and passivity, receptivity to the potentiality of what unfolds. Take care with nouns, for names can often tether the named to a predetermined role or identity. Names can bring the seething world under the control of existing taxonomies and systems. Some things are named according to the specific task or role or function that they are usually identified to perform. Here, naming defines the parameters of expectation and convention, pronouncing and privileging a single designated identity or activity to the exclusion or marginalisation of all others. Definition thus involves the cut of decision, settling the boundaries and limits through which things are both known and knowable. Now, imagine the task or challenge — this could be conceived as an instruction or score, a spell or incantation. Let things be released from their habitual duties and designations. Let them become free of name, more than language ordinarily allows. Repurpose without purpose. Ritual emancipation. Liberated, let everyday things surprise in their potential. Categories of naming becoming protean, porous. How to call things then once their original function falls away. New names become tested through acts of invocation. Contingent naming — a poetic naming based on fleeting tendencies, on vitalities and relations, rather than on the fixing of function or of form. Engage language lightly, for it too suffers the strictures of its own systems of definition and denomination, yet has the potential too for liberation, for also running wild.

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

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