Emma Cocker is a writer-artist whose research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of thinking-in-action therein. Cocker’s language-based artistic research comprises a matrix of writing, reading and conversation practices, including diverse process-oriented, dialogic-collaborative and aesthetic-poetic approaches to working with and through language. 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?, 2024. Cocker is co-founder of the international Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. She is Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University.

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.