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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FEELING ONE’S WAY

Improvisation strives to circumvent the habits of repertoire, avoiding the familiar paths of the past repeating. Activated in the present moment, to improvise is to work with what is immediately to hand. This practice cannot be forced, for it requires a certain letting go, the subtle play of tact. Bide one’s time, for tact is the act of knowing when to hold back. Attuned action, a light touch, sensitive intervention. Not the heavy hand of brute mastery or control, but softly, softly, feeling one’s way. Thinking-with the situation live in the now of its emergence, listening out for what needs to be done. Allied to the faculty of reason, the eyes often strive to see, to seek, to know. Yet to think with the body is a sensorial event, intermingling of sensation and perception, feeling and desire. Towards thinking- or rather thoughtfulness-in-action, for beyond the cerebral introspection or ideation of thought, thoughtfulness involves a state of absorption coupled with the cultivation of care and attention for others and their needs. Thoughtfulness does not grasp or reach for knowledge as something to possess or own. Rather, it is a way of being in the world open to the transformative potential of being touched.

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

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