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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AVAILABILITY GENERATES AVAILABILITY

Hurriedness makes haste, lays waste or seeks to plunder. For to hurry is to rush or run against, as with the hurl of rushing water or of the utterance vehemently thrown. Indeed, to be rushed or hurried impacts beyond the individual’s breathless race against time. Notice the hurt in hurtling, the inadvertent harm of dash and bustle, the incidental casualties of reactive urgency caught in the surge of reckless speed. Unhurried is the necessary time of leisure and of contemplation. A paradoxical slowness can anticipate the most critical of action. Boredom can become a germinal ground for transformation. Boredom’s emptying out of meaning can create the conditions of defamiliarisation, estrangement or even wonder, from which to then reconceive things afresh. Consider the experiential proximity of yawning and gaping, mouth rendered open wide by involuntary gasp for air. The hiatus of hesitation can lead to unexpected openings and ruptures. The lesson of unhurriedness is to bide one’s time. To be unworried by hurry does not mean to retreat from life’s discordant rhythms into a melody of one’s own. Nor is it to absolve oneself of all responsibility, to defer from acting by waiting for another to take the lead. To avail oneself is to make use of the situation for one’s own advantage, to benefit by or to otherwise gain from. Alternatively, to make oneself available is to give more than to take, to offer rather than to withhold, to be of service to each situation at hand. Observe the reciprocal nature of availability, how availability generates availability. Notice how by making oneself more available to time’s unfolding, time itself might somehow feel more available, more open, perhaps even more free. Free(d) time — time released from the pressures of utility or obligation, an alive time unburdened by the deadliness of due dates and deadlines. Here, time is no longer experienced as a constraint or container of life’s unfolding, but rather as its living, beating pulse.

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

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