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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OVER EXPOSURE

Technology’s vigil is insusceptible to human exhaustion or fatigue. It needs no rest, for its attention never tires. Rather than striving to elude its relentless eye, reciprocate its attention. Flood its channels with a deluge of information, a form of resistance through incessant proliferation. Though a smoke screen obscures through the veil of a visual fog, a resistant hypervisibility can be performed beyond the physical filling of the frame. Ambiguity can be activated with exacting precision. High definition sharpens content to a level that can confuse or overwhelm. Heightened resolution acts in antagonism to the ease of virtual flows, forcing the system to buffer, stutter under duress. Saturate every pixel to eschew the economy of online exchange and distribution. Or recall how through overexposure the photographic negative becomes dense and opaque, how through the accumulation of detail an image becomes unreadable to the naked eye.

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

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