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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THINGS START TO LOSE THEIR EDGES

Close-up, things start to lose their edges. The distinction between figure and ground begins to yield. Unfixed from any fixed cinematic frame, fragments of film no longer behave according to the structure of linear narrative but might instead collide and proliferate, presenting multiple and mobile viewpoints. Montage creates contiguity rather than continuity, a friction of touching fragments that refuse to tow the (narrative) line. Sound can be separated from image or alternatively can be replaced with extracts from other places and times. Segments of footage gleaned from different moments in historical time become reassembled into new chronologies, where the sequential laws of cause and effect no longer fully apply. Time loops and rewinds — events can occur in reverse. New patterns emerge and dissolve, where connections are made by rhythm not plotline, nor by replicating the habitual relations between things. Macro and micro share the same scale. A quality of light or luminosity can become an organising principle.

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

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