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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KNOWLEDGE OF THE MARGINS

Do not turn to the encyclopedia, for its knowledge will not serve you well in this terrain. Its entries are redundant sooner than they are written. This landscape will have already changed. Taxonomies only extend the vocabulary for speaking a way through the marshland or mudflats or perilous scrubs. Shifting sands must be navigated with a certain lightness of foot; quickness of the land met with quickness of wit, sharpness of eye. These places will always fall between the gaps in language; leave you lost for words. Knowledge of the margins is not something that can be extracted and stored in dim-lit archives, but rather it is produced by them and then returned back. New ways of operating are required when habitual forms of knowledge no longer suffice. Build towards productive knowledge — the capacity to harness the indeterminate potential of a changing situation, the conditions of flux. Cultivate the power to not power over, attempt not to overpower but rather undertake, intervene. Make not take advantage, nurture the art of knowing how (and when) to work the situation well, of harnessing its chances. Recuperate lost and forgotten knowledge(s), those ways of doing things that have become mistrusted or marginalised as we have gradually turned away from knowing how. Practise the cunning of the poacher or the thief. Observe the laws of brinksmanship, of sailing close to the wind. Become a reader of auspicious signs and of the body’s unspoken language. Grow accustomed to the dark. Know how to disappear into the night and appear smaller than your size and that it gets colder just before the dawn breaks. Weave. Listen and observe. Lie in wait.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 54. Revised extract of a text that was previously published as ‘Room for Manoeuvre, or, Ways of Operating Along the Margins’ in Manual for Marginal Places, (Close and Remote, 2009).

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