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).

→

HELMSMAN’S KNOWLEDGE

Movement through any space is shaped as the desires of the individual body meet with the pressures of its surrounds; performed through the negotiation of different forces as the helmsman steers against the pressure of the water and the wind. At times, it seems that we are losing our grasp of helmsman’s knowledge, our capacity to harness the momentum of forces that are outside of our control. Sometimes perhaps, we give in too soon, surrendering too quick and easily to the force of the situation in which we find ourselves. Too often, our bodies seem at the mercy of powers that cannot fully be discerned, our movements conform to the call of unspoken laws and a logic that we seem unable to resist. Here, the body is experienced only through the pressures acting upon it, seemingly unable to recognise its own internal force or agency, its capacity to withstand or tolerate as much as yield. Certain spaces push towards specific kinds of performance, direct a body to behave in a fixed or scripted way. The possibilities of what a body could do shrink to fit the template of expectation; options narrow to the standards of a pre-set score, where the individual body can express itself only through the slightest embellishment of the norm. Over time, our navigation of a space congeals towards a set pattern of routinised gestures, as day-after-day we dutifully repeat and repeat our chosen groove, rarely missing a beat. Pattern sediments towards protocol, an unspoken rulebook that tacitly moderates the limits of what is allowed. It is tempting to imagine that rules are drawn from elsewhere, laws cooked-up by faceless government hooked on curbing the enthusiasm of our wayward desires. And yet we author and enforce the limitations that determine how we live our lives; our complicity and obedience maintains their authority, strengthens their hold. Then, to be more discerning, for any rule is good only as long as it protects and affirms life, failing if it only curtails or constrains.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 27. Revised extract of a text that was previously published as ‘Experiments Along the Brink of I’, as part of the pamphlet Performing the City produced in collaboration with Sara Wookey and Bianca Scliar Mancini, (2012). Also published in Tripwire: Journal of Poetics, Issue 8, Cities, (Oakland, United States, 2014).

Tip

Tip