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).

→

AN INSURGENT IF

The act of drawing is a conjectural operation, the tentative manifestation of an insurgent if. Conjecture is a practice for scarifying a conceptual terrain, unsettling its surface to create the germinal conditions within which further thought may root and thrive. The act of drawing is not only an observational record of those occurrences belonging to the (external) world but also an attempt to account for or make manifest experiences that exist along another plane of reality. This zone of experience extends from deep within the body, outwardly towards the newly emergent and indeterminate spaces opening out into and beyond the surface of the paper upon which the drawing works. Within the act of drawing, distances cannot be measured by a ruler’s yard, for within the reality of the drawing spatial proximities remain unstable, shifting. Scale fluctuates. Dimensions waver. Shapes appear solid in one instance and then disappear in the next. Flat surfaces give way to vertiginous voids. Lines shimmer along their axis, turning. Concave forms bulge forward suddenly into unexpected protrusions. Receding objects make an unlikely return. Edges seem undecided about which entities they delineate. Movement occurs even whilst remaining still. Drawing supposes — it admits as possible. The supposing drawing remains at the level of suggestion. Suggestion is the practice of inducing or guiding thought without recourse to rational reasoning, the bringing forward of ideas in the absence of an intervening and external process of making sense. Suggestion draws thought. Those susceptible to the powers of suggestion may encounter a change in perceptual experience whilst under its spell. An older meaning links suggestion to an act of turning to the left-hand path. The tendency towards suggestion is thus seen as a move towards the improper or unseemly — it is a seemingly deviant practice. Suggestion is both cloaked and immodest — it is the offering of a hint.

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

Tip

Tip