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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PRACTICE AS DOSAGE

Navigate your own edges and thresholds. Identify your tolerances and resistances. Know when to push yourself and when to pull back. Resist being too judgmental, often a reaction of uncritical critique based on unspoken preconceptions or presumptions, on protocol or convention. Practise one’s own judgment in and of the moment. Against the conditioning that posits certain experiences (failure, awkwardness, embarrassment, discomfort) as best avoided, for such states can open towards new possibilities if handled lightly or serve as a germinal ground for building trust and intimacy with others. Against the conditioning that posits certain experiences (play, joy, delight, spontaneity) as frivolous or thoughtless, for such states can lead to new insights if they are allowed. Learn to differentiate between experiences that diminish the capacity for creative practice (that paralyse, prohibit, inhibit, injure) and those that affirm (that are generative, transformative, that life-enhance). Yet note that nothing is ever experienced as the same. One situation might feel positive to one person while detrimental to another. One’s own receptivity to an event can change by the hour, by the minute, second to second. Practice as dosage. Exposure to an experience within a controlled environment as a means for testing its effects. Not to inoculate against experience but rather to become more sensitised, more capable of recognising ever-subtler nuance. To sensitise — to endow with sensation, from the Latin sensus, past participle of sentire, to feel-perceive. Extension of perception, of sensation and awareness. Activate new realms of experience beyond one’s habits and preferences. Exceed the limits of one’s own tendencies, one’s likes and dislikes.

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

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