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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THE DISCIPLINE OF PLAY

Artistic work paradoxically involves the discipline of play. For play is not activity undertaken lightly. It requires commitment, a capacity for sticking at something beyond all sense of reason, of utility or purpose. Not-yet-performance, rather a process of per-forming. Per-forming — the preposition (per-) indicating through, a forward-through movement, forming and deforming. Doing and undoing. Turning things over. Over and over, yet not the Sisyphean labour of exhaustive repetition, relentless and unceasing. Meaningless work, yes, still not absurd, not futile. Play exhausts things as a method for inviting in something new. Exhaust — to draw out all that is essential, also to drain of strength. To empty or make weak, fatigue. Exhaustion is a way of tiring out the tried-and-tested such that something else might then emerge, where habit is fatigued to release its hold, becomes weakened or disempowered. Fatigue — to drive to the point of break down; to crack or split, but also with its origin in the root agere meaning to set in motion. Play’s act of emptying out of sense or meaning is hopeful — it makes a clearing for the unexpected to arise. Making material acquaintance — a getting-to-know things to not-know, familiarity for rendering strange. Play is inherently wasteful, for its expenditure of effort and energy does not require anything back in return. Play has intention without expectation or goal. It is autotelic — from autos ‘self’ and telos ‘goal’ — for it has no end or purpose other than itself.

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

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