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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SACRIFICE AS SACRED MAKING

Sacrifice — the giving up of one thing for the sake of another. Yet the act of sacrifice must be differentiated from that of ordinary choice. Choice is often a matter of preference while sacrifice involves letting go or surrendering something loved, held dear or otherwise hard to give up. A life offered to a higher force or cause beyond one’s individual needs and wants; or else life lived as offering, daily practice as expression of worship, of devotion or vocation. From sacer (sacred) and facere (to make, to do), sacrifice as sacred making. Artistic dedication — the giving over of one’s time and energy but without the comfort of clear telos or goal. Artistic decision-making involves acting in the absence of predetermined outcome or end. The artist dithers. However, the dithering of the artist is not the restless inability to decide, overwhelmed by choice or intent on keeping options open. Neither is it procrastination, the deferring of decision for another day. Here, dithering is not dilatory, where slowness to act only postpones and delays, puts off until a future time. Rather the artist’s hesitation heightens attention to the present moment, forcing open a gap or interval within the flow of action, even within the continuum of time. Dithering creates a stuttering of time like when the second hand on a clock gets stuck. It holds back, refusing to decide, either to affirm or to deny. In ancient skepticism, the term epoché refers to the practice of suspending judgement, refraining from decision for or against as a way of achieving equanimity or serene calm (ataraxia). Dithering arrests, creating space to ponder, to wonder. Arrest — to stop or restrain, yet also to strike or capture the imagination. Unwavering wavering — practised dithering has patience, is prepared to wait. However, dithering is neither calm nor still, but rather a state of vacillation or agitation, of fluctuation back and forth. Agitate — to disturb or stir up, to incite or set in motion. Unwilling to settle for what is given, dithering agitates the ground, holding a space open for the emergence of something not yet known, that which conscious mind may never have foretold.

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

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