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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PREPARE FOR THE UNEXPECTED

Readiness is the state of being at the cusp of action, mind and body poised, awaiting signal. To be prepared is to anticipate the unforeseen future. Unknown situations, however, demand a speculative approach for you can never be wholly sure what to expect, what skills will be required. Yet, certain practices can be rehearsed daily: using your eyes; creating secret signs; receptiveness; reading maps; judging heights and distances; simple doctoring; stalking; learning to hide; plant identification; differentiating provisions from poisons; imagination; free speech; making fire; building bridges; early rising; whistling; wood whittling; weather wisdom, finding the North. Practice does not make perfect, rather a precarious capacity with no goal other than to be continually practised. Repetition of a singular action creates thinking space in which to contemplate strategy. Learning how to aim an arrow straight is to comprehend the vertiginous dynamic of a line of flight, to conceptualise an escape route. To prepare for the unexpected has a dual function: it is the gesture of getting oneself ready (for anything) but also of scarifying the ground, creating germinal conditions in which something unanticipated might arise. Emergency is both a state of crisis and the event of emergence, the brink of the new. Dissent desires to break with or defy expectation by willing into existence the unexpected, something unlike what has come before, the eruption of a form of thinking or being differently.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 12. Revised extract of a text that was previously published as a pamphlet entitled Yes of the No, commissioned and published by Plan 9, Bristol as part of The Summer of Dissent (2009).

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