FATIGUE HABIT
The artist might begin from where they left off, an existing work or experiment in progress, repeating and modifying a given action or approach until exhaustion. Here, exhaustive repetition is not for the betterment of technique or application, rather a way of tiring out the tried-and-tested such that something else might then emerge, some inconsistency, some anomaly or mutation. A habit is fatigued to release its hold, becomes weakened or disempowered through the gesture of doing and redoing. Such a practice requires patience, the forbearance to stick at something, see it through. The artist must remain vigilant, mindful not to let the habit reinstall, alert to the possibility of both the unpredicted and unpredictable. The artist cannot make this happen — the process cannot be forced. The quality of attention is of an unthinking thoughtfulness or of thoughtful unthinking, receptive awareness capable of recognising the unrecognisable, of witnessing the unthought. The artist might work to undo what has been done — less an unmaking as striving for a state unplanned. Un- shifts in sense from deprivation and removal to that of expansion or of opening out. Unfathomable — existing beyond the mind’s grasp, not to be comprehended. Unbounded — appearing without limits, without borders or bounds. Through practise, the artist tries to move beyond what they already know. Artistic enquiry unsettles what is familiar and certain, working in the direction of not knowing. Yet the not knowing sought is not heedless nor inattentive, not oblivious nor vague. Access a state of unknowing, not through closing one’s eyes or looking the other way, but rather through a willingness to become undone, a capacity for experiencing perplexity and bewilderment. Per-plex — through folding or entanglement. Be-wilder — to be lured or led astray.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)