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

Event: Affinities + Urgencies in Language-based Artistic Research (Part I)

Tuesday 7 December 10.00 — 18.00 CET 2021 (online)

Attended by over 70 international artistic researchers, Affinities + Urgencies in Language-based Artistic Research was a day-long event that I co-hosted/co-organised with Alexander Damianisch, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, within the frame of the SAR Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research.

 

This event evolved in response to the following questions:  How can we collectively support the emergence of different species of proximity and community within the field of expanded language-based practices: we-ness and near-ness; participation; observation; conversation; caring/curation; listening; hosting; guesting; audiencing; supporting; bearing witness; hearing out; feeding back; offering help; spending time; sharing time; sharing resources, world-building? How can we together support different modes of relationality and connectivity [gravitational pulls and resonant affinities] within the field of expanded language-based practices, further ways for generating mutual support and resource?

 

Affinities + Urgencies in Language-based Artistic Research comprised a series of sessions led or facilitated by different individuals or groups for engaging with a specific thematic focus, a field of attraction and resonant affinity, or a matter of urgency relating to language-based artistic research. Towards a more distributed, open organisation of the Special Interest Group within this expanded and expanding community of practice. The aim of this online event was to provide a context for sharing live constellations of interest and focus within the field of language-based artistic research.  

 

Sessions included:

* Choreographic Writing: Kirsi Heimonen | Rebecca Hilton | Chrysa Parkinson | Leena Rouhiainen

* Conceptual and Generative Practices in Language based Artistic Research: Marjolijn van den Berg | Rachel Smith | Marinos Koutsomichalis | Andrew Hauner | Simon Roloff

* In bits and pieces: hybrid writing, research, and (auto)fragmentation: Kris Pint | Nadia Sels | Goda Palekaitė | Maria Gil Ulldemolins

* The un|common ground: Language as a Hiding Place: Anna T. | Marinos Koutsomichalis | Phoenix Savage | Regina Dürig

* Writing as Research as Writing: Marjolijn van den Berg | Nirav Christophe | Daniela Moosmann | Ninke Overbeek

 

An archive of the event with some video documentation of presentations can be found here. Affinities + Urgencies in Language-based Artistic Research (Part II) will take place on 15 February 2022.