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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NEVER GET TOO FIXED

There are some things that cannot be easily explained, that refuse to be reduced to map or guide or manual. Beyond the know-that of the encyclopedia, consider those embodied forms of tacit knowledge or know-how that are resistant to being shown or said, that only can be performed or practised. The sinews of the body hold knowledges that words can never tell. Explanation fails to account for processes where not knowing and uncertainty, where trial and error, or where feeling one’s way play a central part. Certain ways of operating emerge only in response to the contingency of the situation. Activated with sensitivity, how is alert to the particularity of the occasion. Its ways of doing things are bespoke to the specificity of every now. Different modalities of being and doing create different ways of perceiving oneself and one’s surrounds. How is less a destination, rather the journey travelled. There is more than one way to get from A to B. The best way is not necessarily the shortest. One’s route should never get too fixed.

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

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