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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EXERCISE THE SENSES

Take care, for temporal explorations can disorient and unsettle. First ground one’s experiments through an exercise of the senses. Eyes. Ears. Mouth. Nose. Skin. Thresholds between interior and exterior, the meeting between one’s own sensory-nervous system and outside stimulus, or rather the points of their delicate enmeshing. Yet the senses have been conditioned to function within habitual parameters. They often see what they are used to seeing, hear what they are used to hearing. Indeed, given the accelerated and over-saturated conditions of contemporary life, the senses can all too often become overwhelmed by too much stimulus, quickly distracted by the promise of something new. Temporal exploration requires time, the repetition of a practice. Close the eyes. Breathe deep. Energise the face with the warmth of one’s own hands. Gently turn the head on its axis, from side to side. Notice the taste of one’s closed mouth, then open wide to sample the surrounding air. Sigh aloud one’s exhalation. Inhale, attending to atmospheric temperature, to its texture and to smell. Closed eyes can be let to orbit in darkened sockets, the occluded gaze exercised in the blind tracing of a figure-of-eight. Bring the hands to cup one’s ears, momentarily silencing exterior sound. Attend to the subtle noises of one’s interior. Then, as the hands release, bring new alertness to the sound of one’s surrounds.

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

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