Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research enquiry unfolds at the threshold between writing/art, involving diverse process-oriented, dialogic-collaborative and aesthetic-poetic approaches to working with and through language. Cocker often works in collaboration with other artists on durational projects, where the studio-gallery or site-specific context is approached as a live laboratory for shared artistic research. Cocker’s writing has been published in Failure, 2010; Stillness in a Mobile World, 2010; Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Thought, 2011; Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art, 2012; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, 2013; Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line, 2017; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, 2018; Live Coding: A User's Manual, 2023, and in the solo collections, The Yes of the No, 2016, and How Do You Do?, 2025. Cocker is co-founder of the international Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. See also https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2985-7839

The Yes of the No!


My text, The Yes of the No!, was launched on 9th October at Plan 9 as part of their final event marking the closure of The Summer of Dissent. The text is the culmination of a writing residency undertaken during the Summer in Bristol in conjunction with the Summer of Dissent. Drawing on my discussions with artists involved in the programme, alongside my experiences of participating in many of the events (from witnessing Debord's Game of War to crafting a bow and arrow in the woods with Girl Gang), the text provides a framework and overview of the themes, concerns and issues raised by the Summer of Dissent and its participants. I hope to reflect on the value of the 'thinking space' provided by this kind of residency model in relation to my practice as an art-writer in a forthcoming article for a-n (as one of their commissions on critical writing).






The text is structured around the following chapter headings:
The Yes of the No!
First – “Steps towards dancing solo”
Second – “Becoming the cause”
Third – “If everything has been done, then what is left?”
Fourth – “Prepare for the unexpected”
Fifth – “Make do”
Sixth – “Know your limits”
Seventh – “Embody knowledge”
Eighth – “Fall beneath the radar”
Ninth – “Am I bothered?”
Tenth – “Going overboard”
Eleventh – “Being in two minds”
Twelfth – “Without rhyme or reason”
Thirteenth – “Bide your time”
Fourteenth – “Opting in”
Fifteenth – “Hope springs eternal”

Below are a series of images of the publication: