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).

→

MAKING THINGS DISAPPEAR

Magic is a word given to experiences that exceed our habitual ways of comprehending the world; extra to the logic of ordinary cause and effect. Less a supernatural power, the art of magic involves learning how to suspend or stall the rules of causal law. This requires practice. The magician practises how to make things disappear. Close up magic eschews virtuosity. The skill is not in showing one’s knowledge through flourish or excess, but in paring things back, keeping it simple. Misdirection relies on the viewer not seeing what is happening in front of their very eyes. Sleight is the practice of dexterity. The art of close up is one of making things vanish in clear sight. Attention can be taken elsewhere, momentarily distracted. Focus can be made to shift. Or the invitation can be to look harder, longer, with more intent — to fix the gaze, not to look away. Extended attention — like the process of repetition — can be used to defamiliarise, make strange, where the more something is scrutinised the less it becomes known. Through sustained observation, things might begin to shape-shift — becoming light, becoming shadow, becoming time. To make things disappear is not to render them invisible, but rather, that they are no longer recognised. Edges can be made to soften, solids made to melt, names can be forgotten.

From Emma Cocker, The Yes of the No, (Sheffield: Site Gallery, 2016), p. 92. 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).

Tip

Tip