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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LEAN INTO THE UNKNOWN

The cadence and rhythmic pacing of conversation — the tempo of speech, its pitch and intonation — can often be of rising and falling, of dipping and peaking. Excited acceleration. Hesitation. Deliberation. Syncopation. Abbreviation. Words dropped. Omissions. Repetitions. Sentence incompletion. Disregard for punctuation. Hurried utterance. Syllabic glides and slurs. In the liveness of conversation, words can slip and spill into existence. Thought can be conjured in the event of its utterance, verbalised at the point of thinking leaning into the unknown. Bodily lettering. Tasting of words. Language caress of the tongue. Phonemes felt against lips, exhaled on the breath. Yes, it can be difficult to shape experience into words. Language can often seem too stiff or rigid. Like the body, language may also need to be stretched and flexed. Language can be exercised akin to lungs and limbs. Cultivate one’s agility in speech as much as action. Nurture one’s endurance for working out with words. Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment, the experience of struggling with, of stumbling or falling over one’s words. Over and over, turned up and inside out, language can be rolled around in the mouth until it starts to yield or give. Words can be pressured until they begin to arc and fold. Akin to the body repeatedly falling, language might be generated from within fall-like circumstances. Practise linguistic falls.

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

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