Operating under the title, ‘Not Yet There' my practice is characterized by a state of restlessness or wandering that serves as both subject & motivation for my enquiries. Writing & text-based work are used to explore models of practice – & subjectivity – which resist or refuse the pressure of a single or stable position by remaining wilfully unresolved. My work interrogates the critical (& often resistant) potential within experiences or conditions such as failure, irresolution, boredom, deferral, hesitation, incomprehensibility, inconsistency & stillness. Whilst my practice tends towards the essayistic (embracing the potential of the essay as a ‘tentative effort’ or ‘trial’), I am increasingly interested in performative, invitational, propositional & even collaborative models for producing texts. Processes of condensation, extraction, fragmentation, listing, footnoting, cross-referencing & appropriation have become critical methods for attempting to produce speculative 'openings' rather than drawing conclusions, or for appearing purposeful whilst remaining without clear or discernible intent. I am a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University & live in Sheffield.

Friday, 9 September 2011

Publication: COPY // unfold




My text-work Close Reading (G.D.T.F, 1993) has been selected for inclusion in the forthcoming edition of COPY, a publication of experimental/art writing curated by Critical Writing CollectiveCOPY explores the boundaries of critical and experimental art writing through the publishing of writing as or within art practice, and page based works with a critical / textual element. COPY // unfold suggests a tension between the resolved and unresolved, drafted and rewritten, finished and unfinished through works which explore, respond to or enact in their own form a state of being ‘in process’.  Contributors include Alain AyersDavid Berridge, Julia Calver, Paul CarrRachel Lois ClaphamEmma CockerLaura DavidsonJoanna LovedayFlatten the MountainDaniel FogartySarah Frydenlund, Derek Horton, Tamarin NorwoodFlora RobertsonTerry SlaterRichard TaylorJohn WinslowPaul Wright. COPY is designed in collaboration with Dust.


Emma Cocker, Close Reading (G.D. T.F. 1993), 2011



Through the practice of close reading, language can be made to stretch or pucker, ruche or fray. With experience, it can be pulled thin and sheer as delicate gauze or gathered up into thick and impenetrable creases. Close Reading (G.D. T.F. 1993) is part of an ongoing series that investigates the practice of close reading or of an ‘explication de texte’ as a critical tool for destabilizing language, for breaking up the linear unfolding of language into discontinuous fragments. Close Reading (G.D. T.F. 1993) performs a close reading of Gilles Deleuze, The Fold, 1993, in an attempt to render the text itself as an unfolding of pleats and stutters.