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.

Publication: The Yes of the No




I am currently working on a publication drawing together selected fragments of my writing produced in dialogue with, parallel to and as art practice (from between 2007 — 2014). Beginning with a meditation on the affirmative potential of ‘no’ and on the dissident capacity of yes-saying as a species of refusal, The Yes of the No advocates different models of daily practice (exercises or askesis) through which to perform life — as is — in the subjunctive key of what if or even what might be. Existing in the space between imaginative proposition and a call to action, The Yes of the No is a compendium of provocations, propositions and potential tactics for operating otherwise — ranging from navigating the city and inhabiting the margins to errant acts of reading; from preparing for the unexpected to learning how to ‘not know’, from minor acts of singular sedition to collective expressions of an insurgent ‘we’. The publication, entitled The Yes of the No takes the form of a series of single-page prose(-poem) paragraphs, which might be read in sequence or else approached in the singular. Each page-paragraph is conceived as implicitly connected to others, yet with an identity (and name) of its own - the page titles include:
TO BUILD YOU HAVE TO BUILD; THE YES OF THE NO; COME ON; ON + ON; STEPS TOWARDS DANCING SOLO; BECOMING THE CAUSE; IF EVERYTHING HAS BEEN DONE THEN WHAT IS LEFT?; PREPARE FOR THE UNEXPECTED; MAKE DO; KNOW YOUR LIMITS; EMBODY KNOWLEDGE; FALL BENEATH THE RADAR; AM I BOTHERED?; GOING OVERBOARD; BEING IN TWO MINDS; WITHOUT RHYME OR REASON; BIDE YOUR TIME; OPTING IN; HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL; AS IF NOT AS IS; BETWEEN THE WATER + THE WIND; HELMSMAN’S KNOWLEDGE; RECALIBRATION; LIFE AS GYMNASIUM; HOW A CITY FEELS; LOOKING FOR; LOOPHOLES; NAVIGATING LIMITS; FOLD / UNFOLD; CONTIGUITY; GOOD COMPANY; APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR; GLIMPSES OF WHAT IF; NOT THE SAME AS; WALK; STOP; OBSERVE; FEEL; TRACE; STILL; WAIT; BREAK; GROUP; SOCIAL ASSEMBLAGE; SKIRTING THE CENTRE; GUIDE AGAINST GUIDES; BEATING THE BOUNDS; AS NEEDS MUSTER; KNOWLEDGE OF THE MARGINS; GLIMPSING; REHEARSING SPACES; FINDING THE GAPS; ON BEING LEFT OPEN; THE (NEW) ORDER OF THE DAY; GET INVOLVED; FIND OTHER MEANS; DRIFT; GLEAN; BE GUILEFUL; BETWEEN YOU + ME; STEPPING TOWARDS STEPPING AWAY; DISTANCING THE IF AND THEN; ON NOT KNOWING; PREPARING FOR THE UNEXPECTED; READINESS; SEEING SHADOWS; BEING OPEN; OR – WHAT NOW, WHAT NEXT?; VOLUNTARY VERTIGO; MOVES TOWARDS THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE WILD; NOT ONLY WHAT IT IS NOT; KNOWING HOW TO NOT KNOW; INTO THE FRAY; DETERMINED INDETERMINACY; OTHER TO THE WORLD OF THINGS + FORMS; SUSPENDED SENTENCES; CLOSER READING; PLUMBING THE DEPTHS; PRACTICED LIVING; CAPACITY BUILDING; RESISTANCE TRAINING; MEMORIZATION; REPEATING NOT REPEATING; EXTRA-SENSORY PERCEPTION; VIGILANCE; SEEING BEYOND THE VISIBLE; MAKING THINGS DISAPPEAR; ELECTIVE ELASTICITY; DELIQUESCENCE; MEDIAL REFLEXIVE; AS LONG AS; QUICK OF THE SLOW; TEST OF NERVE; THIS + THAT; OUR OWN PRIVATE UNIVERSE; FALSE ALIBI; LAG; MAKING ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE; QUICK QUICK SLOW; WEAVE; THE FABRIC OF TIME; DO + UNDO; UNFIXITY; BEGINNING AGAIN + AGAIN