Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her research enquiry unfolds at the threshold between writing/art, involving diverse process-oriented, dialogic-collaborative and aesthetic-poetic approaches to working with and through language. Cocker often works in collaboration with other artists on durational projects, where the studio-gallery or site-specific context is approached as a live laboratory for shared artistic research. 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?, 2025. Cocker is co-founder of the international Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. See also https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2985-7839

Special Issue: Practices of Phenomenological and Artistic Research

I am a co-editor (with Alex Arteaga, Juha Himanka and Journal Editor Erika Goble) of a Special Issue of the Journal of Phenomenology and Practice, on “Practices of Phenomenological and Artistic Research”.
This special issue will explore existing and possible connections between two different sets of practices: phenomenological research practice and artistic research practice. On the one hand, both sets of practices share a basic aspect: they approach their object of research as phenomena, that is, through their phenomenal presences. On the other hand, these sets of practice are configured by different forms of action developed in different media — among many others, written or oral language, drawing, architectural design, film, photography, sound or body movement. On this twofold basis, we are inviting submissions that address the following questions and demonstrate them in action: How do the commonalities between practices and methods of artistic and phenomenological research manifest? How can phenomenological research be accomplished in artistic media and by artistic means? How can artistic research extend the scope of phenomenology as research practice? In turn, how can phenomenology contribute to further develop artistic research practices? 
The focus of this special issue goes beyond traditional views of the relationships between art and phenomenology by considering both as fields of research, or more specifically, as ways of researching through phenomena. For the purposes of this special issue, art is not approached as an object of research for phenomenologists and phenomenology should not be treated in this context as a theoretical reference for artists producing art works. Accordingly, we are neither focusing on inquiry into practices of artistic production based in or inspired by phenomenology nor on phenomenological theories of art.
Instead, we are focusing on research practices developed through the influence, combination or even hybridization of phenomenological and artistic approaches. We are convinced that in pushing this subject matter we are contributing to an original methodological development of both fields: phenomenology and artistic research.
We invite submissions from artistic researchers and phenomenologists that activate the concerns of this Special Issue, Practices of Phenomenological and Artistic Research. The call can be viewed here.

Publication: Ecologies of Practice


We - Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus, Lena Séraphin - have a research exposition published in this current issue of RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research. Our research exposition is entitled Reading on Reading: Ecologies of Reading.

Issue #14 Ecologies of Practice

What can artistic research do in an ecology of research practices?

The RUUKKU issue Ecologies of Practice has its starting point in the Research Pavilion #3 project, hosted by University of the Arts Helsinki, that brought together more than fifty artist-researchers from twenty countries over a period of twenty months. The key aim of Research Pavilion #3 was to foster new artistic research culture and collegial exchange. The project started with an open call for "Research Cells" in April 2018 and evolved through a series of Research Cell Assemblies organised in Helsinki to an intensive period of activity in the context of the Venice Biennale. The high season of the project was wrapped up in October 2019 in the form of a concise research exhibition entitled RP#3 Info Lab that took place at the Exhibition Laboratory in Helsinki. The entire Research Pavilion #3 project is extensively documented in the Research Catalogue (https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/474888/474889).


The call for RUUKKU #14 encouraged the Research Cells and individual participants of the Research Pavilion to submit the outcomes of their research to the peer-review process. The call also explicitly opened the doors for further submissions beyond the Research Pavilion project. The issue consists of fifteen expositions, eight of them deriving from the Research Pavilion #3 project. The authors are Annette Arlander, Alex Arteaga, Louise Atkinson, Laura Bissell, Tine Blom, Claire Robyn Booth-Kurpnieks, Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus, Ozgu Gundeslioglu, Maria Huhmarniemi, Katja Juhola, Pekka Kantonen, Esa Kirkkopelto, Riikka Latva-Somppi, Maiju Loukola, Otso Lähdeoja, Charulatha Mani, Mari Martin, Maarit Mäkelä, Tuula Närhinen, Kaisa Raatikainen, and Lena Séraphin. Voices section includes a contribution by Lucy Cotter, and the Lectio series features Henna-Riikka Halonen. The issue is edited by Mika Elo, Tero Heikkinen and Henk Slager.

The peer-reviewed issue Ecologies of Practice sums up Research Pavilion #3, but the Research Pavilion project will continue to highlight the manifold practices and approaches of artistic research. These include further publishing activities: an open call for a special issue "Practices of Phenomenological and Artistic Research" of Phenomenology & Practice is soon to be announced by the members of the Through Phenomena Themselves Research Cell that was part of Research Pavilion #3. The fourth edition of the Research Pavilion will be organised in Helsinki in 2021.


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