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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SEEING BEYOND THE VISIBLE

Foreseeing the unforeseeable is a skill that can be honed. Pay heed to the stalker or the poacher, she who anticipates the direction of flight in advance of its taking form. Before movement is ever actualised it can still be felt or sensed. Even before intention there is intension. Before extension into space, movement has intensity, the rising of energy that precedes resolve. Prescience is the art of knowing of things before they happen. Before the term clairvoyant meant the capacity for seeing into the future (foresight), it referred to a quality of insight, keen perception or clear-sightedness. Clair (clear) + voyant (present participle of voir, to see) — an intuitive ability to see or see-k out things as they really are. So open the eyes. This does not mean look harder but rather more receptively. Cultivate a different retinal attention. Look twice; activate second sight.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 91. Revised extract of a text that was previously published in Manual, an artists’ bookwork produced in collaboration with performance artist and writer Victoria Gray, (2014).

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