Emma Cocker is a writer-artist based in Sheffield and Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University. Emma's research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ therein. Her practice unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches, alongside a mode of ‘contiguous writing’ — a way of writing-with that seeks to touch upon rather than being explicitly about. Her writing is 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; Reading/Feeling, 2013; 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?, 2024.

Interview: Meaningful Meaninglessness

Below is a transcript from the 'in conversation' I had with artist Candice Jacobs at G39 in Cardiff. The text chimes with some of the ideas explored in my recent text, Without Rhyme or Reason on the work of Vlatka Horvat. An edited version of the transcript will be appearing in a forthcoming issue of the Nottingham Visual Arts magazine. 


Image: Candice Jacobs, Sculpture made by crane driver using the crane and materials on site at 'Nottingham Contemporary' and documented from the cab of the crane by the crane driver using his mobile phone, (2008)

Meaningful Meaninglessness