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.

Publication: On Writing and Digital Media

My article 'Live Notation: Reflections on a Kairotic Practice' is available in the current issue of Performance Research, Volume. 18, Issue 5, 'On Writing and Digital Media',  eds. Ric Allsopp and Jerome Fletcher. More information here.

A limited number of free copies of my article can be accessed here.


Event: Loitering with Intent


I was in Stockholm from 5 – 9 March, attending the conference Loitering with Intent: A Feast of Research and the Society of Artistic Research AGM. Loitering with Intent (5 – 7 March) brought together Stockholm University of the Arts and the Society for Artistic Research to explore formats for sharing knowledge that emerge from artistic research practices. The Loitering with Intent conference foregrounded performative modes of exposing practice as research, celebrating the fragile balance between sensory, situated and spoken forms of knowledge. Invited artists included: Henrik Agger, Louise Bjurholm, Magnus Bärtås, Nils Claesson, Florian Dombois, Kristina Hagström-Ståhl, Paul Landon, Brita Lemmens, Tero Nauha, Kirsi Nevanti, Poste Restante, Michael Schwab, Koen Vanmechelen, Magnus William Olsson, Rasmus Ölme.
This event has provided an impetus for me to finally start archiving some of my own research within the Society for Artistic Research online catalogue, a purpose built repository for international artistic research. To date, I have started ‘expositions’ for my Close Reading/Live Writing projects and also for the collaborative research undertaken with Open City. More to follow soon.