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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BEYOND UTILITY

Breathing’s rhythm can expose one’s innermost anxieties and excitations, action’s points of effort and ease. Sighed exhalation brings release, relief. Anticipatory inhalation — a sharp gasp, deep intake of air. Unsettle the correlation between breath and action as a device for disorientation. Fall in and out of sync. Amplify this disjunction, dislocating the indexical relation between an action and its resulting sound. Acoustic vibrations and reverberations can convince of something happening that really isn’t there. Invert the sound signature of daily gestures. Back slang speech acts, language uttered phonemically back-to-front. Apply this principle to other actions. Rehearse a reverse choreography of one’s moves in time and space. Track forwards. Backtrack. Again. Again. Repeat. Re-move. Do. Undo. Channel the cunning of Penelope, wily weaver of Ancient Greece. Her work of daily weaving and nightly unweaving a tactical ruse such that her task remained incomplete, in turn, that she too might remain unbounded. Absence of closure — no ending, no clear beginning. No why, no wherefore. Beyond utility or exchange. Atelic — without telos, operate in the absence of a predetermined outcome or goal. Autotelic — action practised for its own sake. Meaning intrinsic, in-and-of itself. Nothing, only flow.

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

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