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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BETWEEN THE WATER + THE WIND

There are certain things in the world that only really come into being in those moments when they are activated or brought into action by other things. A boat is much like any other vessel until it is brought into contact with water, and it is this relationship to the water that in part makes a boat a boat. So too, the specificity or singularity of the boat is furthermore made evident during the act of sailing, for sailing epitomises the mode of being which is a boat. However, the act of sailing is only made possible through the interplay of multiple forces, including but not only including that of the boat itself. Sailing is the interaction of the boat and the skipper and the water and the wind. It is an event that takes place in the moment of these different forces coming together in one place. Remove any one to reveal their inextricable interconnectedness. The negotiation or interrelation between these elements creates the dynamic of movement and in turn it is this movement over water that defines the boat as a boat, gives it its reason for being. The boat’s reason for being is thus dependent upon the presence of other forces. Its existence or potential, at least, is always conditional — affected and determined by the existence of other things. Learning to sail involves the negotiation between and with these different elements, it is a process of facilitation or mediation that attempts to make good the turbulence created by the pull of the water and the push of the wind. Sailing then, involves a mode of attendance or attention to these different and often competing forces; moreover, an intuition for knowing when to yield and for recognising when to assert control. Our own experience of being in the world might also be thought of in terms of these interrelations and co-dependencies. Subject formation is a highly contingent process, which takes place somehow between and through the event of affecting and of being affected by other things. It is perhaps no coincidence that the word subject also means to be depending or conditional upon somebody or something else, something other.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 26. Revised extract of a text that was previously published as ‘Somehow between the Water and the Wind’, essay on the work of Brigid McLeer, published by Lanchester Gallery Projects, Lanchester Gallery, Coventry, in conjunction with the exhibition Isoli [cont.] (2009).

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