MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCY
The work of the artist might well begin in the absence of a clearly defined question or place to start. Yet this is not to say that she sets out from nothing, from blank slate or empty stage, for there is always a before. Still, she ventures from where she finds herself, at this moment, here-and-now. Artistic process involves a reciprocal relation between thinking and making — where one starts and the other begins is difficult to discern. Thinking-making — a complex relation, from com- meaning with, together, and plectere as in to weave, to braid, entwine. Making-thinking / thinking-making — but which comes first? Such a question appears analogous to the causality dilemma of the chicken and the egg, reflecting a desire to differentiate cause from effect, and to establish these relations within a chronological timeframe. It might seem that causes come first, while effects necessarily follow. Resistant to the sequential logic of this-follows-this, the conundrum of the chicken and egg refers to the interweaving of a mutually interdependent relation. There is no originary cause since each is dependent on the other for its coming-into-existence. Likewise, one might consider the relation between artistic thinking and making, perhaps even between artist and art. As the artist works to create the conditions for artistic practice, in turn, the practising of artistic work shapes her subjectivity, her way of being in the world. Art and artist, thinking and making, are thus radically co-constitutive. Each draws the other into being — affirmation of a mutual bringing-into-life.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)