Emma Cocker is a writer-artist based in Sheffield and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. Operating under the title Not Yet There, Cocker's research focuses on the process of artistic exploration and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ emerging therein; on models of (art) practice and subjectivity that resist the pressure of a single, stable position by remaining wilfully unresolved. Her mode of working unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches to producing texts parallel to and as art practice. Cocker's recent 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; Reading/Feeling (Affect), 2013; On Not Knowing: How Artists Think, 2013; Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line, 2017; The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice, and as a solo collection entitled The Yes of the No, 2016.
My paper abstract 'Not Yet There: Shipwreck as Suspended Potentiality' has been accepted as part of the forthcoming conference, 'The Semiotics of Shipwreck: A Symposium on the Representation and Resonance of Maritime Disaster' which will take place at the National Maritime Museum, London (19th-20th November, 2010 )
Image: Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous
Abstract excerpts:
"This paper will examine the resonance of the shipwreck motif within selected visual art practices since the 1960s by reflecting speculatively upon how it has been reclaimed from the vaults of Romanticism and reinvested with critical significance within a conceptual lexicon ... Here, the shipwreck motif serves to articulate/represent the suspended potentiality of the ‘irresolvable or unresolved quest’; teleological imperative forever poised at the point of non-attainment or anticipation, a disrupted narrative in which closure or completion is indefinitely deferred. The shipwreck belongs to the borderlands; like the ruin it has a liminal status where it remains ‘no longer and not yet’. It is also a curiously ambivalent anti-monument – a contradictory or inconsistent signifier. Shipwrecks possess the complex aporetic properties of an adventurer’s deflated dreams, functioning both as evidence of endeavour/resignation; hope/failure; possibility/impossibility; the trace or remainder of something now absent, the paradoxical visualization – like the phantom – of a disappearance or of loss. The paper thus shifts from ‘locating’ interest in the shipwreck motif within the context of Romantic Conceptualism, towards attempting to posit that it is its dislocated or unstable conceptual properties that form part of its ongoing fascination for artists"
Context: Background to the conference
Ever since human beings first began seafaring, they have been fascinated, and haunted, by shipwrecks. For maritime societies especially, these tragedies at sea have been a constant source of anxiety, since they are disasters that potentially devastate not only individuals but also the community or nation as a whole. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that shipwreck is also one of the oldest motifs in art and literature. It can be traced as far back as the second millennium BCE, when a fragmentary Egyptian papyrus tells of a sailor shipwrecked on an island that is home to a giant snake. Thereafter it becomes a key topos in the romance genre, from Heliodorus to Shakespeare and beyond, and recurs frequently in poetry, from Homer's Odyssey and Horace's Odes through to Byron's Don Juan and Hopkins's 'The Wreck of the Deutschland'. It has a Biblical presence, for example in the account of St Paul's shipwreck. In painting, meanwhile, shipwreck and its aftermath have been taken up by artists ranging from Vernet and Gericault to Sydney Nolan. And the shipwreck scenario may fairly (if a little paradoxically) be said to have launched the modern novel, in English at least: shipwrecks are of course central to both Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Swift's Gulliver's Travels. This fascination with the shipwreck scenario continues right down to the present day, notwithstanding the fact that shipwrecks are today much more infrequent than they were in the past ... Over the years, accounts and metaphors of shipwreck have taken diverse forms and served various purposes; the iconicity that attaches to the shipwreck motif has also varied significantly across time and between different cultures. Thus in some forms it is fused with Protestant traditions of spiritual autobiography, and comes to denote a cataclysmic, transformative event in the life of an individual. In others, meanwhile, the topos is informed by Horace's famous metaphor of the ship of state, and becomes associated with an act of collective memorialization and mourning. The aim of this symposium is to explore the shifting and multiple semiotics of shipwreck; to trace the evolution of the shipwreck motif over time and across different cultures; and to trace the circulation of accounts and representations of specific shipwrecks (eg the Titanic, the Grosvenor and so forth) through culture.
My text, The Yes of the No!, was launched on 9th October at Plan 9 as part of their final event marking the closure of The Summer of Dissent. The text is the culmination of a writing residency undertaken during the Summer in Bristol in conjunction with the Summer of Dissent. Drawing on my discussions with artists involved in the programme, alongside my experiences of participating in many of the events (from witnessing Debord's Game of War to crafting a bow and arrow in the woods with Girl Gang), the text provides a framework and overview of the themes, concerns and issues raised by the Summer of Dissent and its participants. I hope to reflect on the value of the 'thinking space' provided by this kind of residency model in relation to my practice as an art-writer in a forthcoming article for a-n (as one of their commissions on critical writing).
The text is structured around the following chapter headings:
The Yes of the No!
First –“Steps towards dancing solo”
Second – “Becoming the cause”
Third–“If everything has been done, then what is left?”
Image: Pete McPartlan - Readers Block(s)- Mapping Misunderstanding(s)
from the publication, An Assembling. ed. David Berridge
As part of the Essaying Essays project, I am including a new text work as part of the first publication from this project, ESSAYING ESSAYS: AN ASSEMBLING No.1.
ESSAYING ESSAYS: AN ASSEMBLING #1
Now available for free PDF download, featuring experiments in essaying from:
David Berridge; Rachel Lois Clapham; Emma Cocker; Alex Eisenberg; Fiona Fullam; Alex Hardy; Éilis Kirby; Jenny Lawson; Patricia Lyons; Pete McPartian; John Pinder.
Assembled by David Berridge as part of ESSAYING ESSAYS: A TEMPORARY COLLECTIVE OF READERS, one of seven projects by the FREE PRESS collective exploring economies of ideas and alternative modes of dissemination and exchange.
ASSEMBLING adopts another project by Richard Kostelanetz in the 1970's. Invited contributors submitted multiple copies of their contributions, which Kostelanetz then assembled and distributed. ASSEMBLING is an experiment in temporary collective publishing, exploring relations of writing, publishing and print and online distribution. ASSEMBLING is published under the CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. The work (see below) takes the idea of 'essaying' as a trial or endeavour in order to compile a list of impossible, improbable, abstract or absurd quests and searches. Each entry is a 'found quest' having been obtained from searching the British library database for publications containing the words 'in search of... ' and then attempting to edit or remove any real sense of teleological or measurable outcome. Drawing together the factual and fictional, the searches in the list operate at the point where ‘legitimate research activity’ collapses into the quest for rather more indefinable or speculative (or alternatively Romantic or even quixotic) objectives.
To try, to tentatively attempt
In search of (1) clues; (2) a new life; (3) a method; (4) quality; (5) a psychic economy; (6) the perfect stranger; (7) Enlightenment; (8) a gust of wind; (9) power and politics; (10) principles; (11) complications; (12) the dream people; (13) life on Mars; (14) a withering community; (15) love; (16) the lost; (17) the origins of life; (18) a guru; (19) animal consciousness; (20) a scapegoat; (21) God and some lesser tales; (22) mathematical truth; (23) remarkable trees; (24) silent spaces; (25) gold paved streets; (26) life on other planets; (27) the origins of art; (28) the edge of the world; (29) hospitality; (30) a permanent peace; (31) strategic performance; (32) the lost feminine; (33) the living dead; (34) Dracula; (35) a poetry of specifics, (36) thought, (37) matter and experience; (38) identity; (39) the real and right; (40) normality; (41) order in life; (42) the perfect drug; (43) wonder; (44) the true self; (45) great coffee; (46) cultural unity; (47) excellence; (48) the origins of his evil; (49) a non-dogmatic theology; (50) ghosts; (51) empirical evidence; (52) exceptionally difficult constraint satisfaction problems; (53) shelter, subjectivity and spaces of loss; (54) greatness; (55) common ground; (56) clusters; (57) an impotent man; (58) the meaning of sex; (59) madness; (60) universal values; (61) the human mind; (62) order; (63) true wisdom; (64) answers; (65) a glorious death; (66) rigour and relevance; (67) the teller of tales; (68) a symmetry bond; (69) human origins; (70) authenticity; (71) quality; (72) solutions; (73) more solutions; (74) solutions to the problem;(75) intimacy; (76) infinity; (77) humanity; (78) a border pedagogy; (79) lotus feet; (80) a new world order; (81) the lost ladino; (82) prevention; (83) what makes us human; (84) the rules of the new games; (85) healing; (86) a better world; (87) Schrödinger’s cat; (88) Schopenhauer’s cat; (89) connections; (90) happiness; (91) learning; (92) a cure; (93) the kite runner; (94) the good life; (95) flowers of the Amazon forests; (96) congruence; (97) a new state;(98) a role; (99) a past; (100) a deity; (101) liquidity; (102) an alternative; (103) meaning; (104) the hidden meaning; (105) our mothers’ gardens; (106) direction; (107) stability; (108) lake monsters; (109) ancient astronomies; (110) a new creation; (111) the melancholy baby; (112) Peter Pan; (113) the Pied Piper; (114) the secret of the universe; (115) genetic origins; (116) the precious pearl; (117) the inner man; (118) Europe’s borders; (119) the perfect house; (120) structure; (121) white crows; (123) silence; (124) the existential pathway; (125) magic; (126) integrity; (127) their conscience; (128) a script; (129) a character; (130) two characters; (131) proof of his existence; (132) the cheddar man; (133) the magic bullet; (134) text syntax; (135) light; (136) power; (137) wonder; (138) promise; (139) truth; (140) hot water; (141) the great northern diver; (142) a future; (143) a soul; (144) weather; (145) independence; (146) an authentic vision; (147) insight; (148) justice; (149) legitimacy; (150) legibility; (151) civic order; (152) a new majority; (153) control; (154) reusable rocketry; (155) human mastery; (156) an eternal identity; (157) an empire; (158) interplanetary travel; (159) world domination; (160) the earthly paradise; (161) inclusion and participation; (162) the conditions of life; (163) keystones; (164) autonomy; (165) reality; (166) self-knowledge; (167) security; (168) the secrets of sex; (169) English windmills; (170) aerodynamic stability; (171) the elements; (172) a theory; (173) the ultimate theory; (174) a new theory of cosmic origins; (175) superstrings, symmetry and the theory of everything; (176) comedy; (177) intelligence; (178) the Holy Grail; (179) autonomy, (180) democracy and development; (181) reasonableness; (182) responsibility; (183) personal fulfilment; (184) leadership; (185) ecstasy; (186) transcontextual criteria; (187) alien planets; (188) productivity growth; (189) moral authority; (190) competence; (191) balance; (192) medical certainty; (193) understanding; (194) an ultimate explanation; (195) public identity; (196) freedom; (197) authority and honour; (198) value; (199) biological origins; (200) the North West; (201) Elvis; (202) Eastern promise; (203) the pleasure palace; (204) the pleasure principle; (205) the substance of substance; (206) unity and integration; (207) the present tense; (208) a super-reality; (209) power and liberty; (210) lost knowledge; (211) comfort; (212) a populist modernism; (213) absolute zero; (214) the dream; (215) nonesuch; (216) utopia; (217) a rigorous science of philosophy; (218) a physiological signature; (219) a third way; (220) a historical movement; (221) ultimacy; (222) optimals; (223) the supreme principle; (224) individualized therapies; (225) what saves us; (226) life in the universe;(227) ancient DNA;(228) extraterrestrial intelligence; (229) a usable past; (230) modern human origins; (231) free energy; (232) new ways; (233) the essence of the west; (234) the ideal society; (235) a paradigm shift; (236) the good; (237) an ideal development model; (238) wisdom;(239) the gamma ray; (240) civility; (241) the missing science of consciousness;(242) the materiality of experience; (243) a patriarchal ideal (244) authentic words;(245) skyscrapers; (246) enemies; (247) allies; (248) a livable world; (249) who we are; (250) the missing gene; (251) endless energy; (252) healing; (253) Eve; (254) the Odyssey; (255) a unifying principle; (256) the missing mass and the ultimate fate of the universe; (257) a true self; (258) a new stability; (259) distant relatives; (260) the beginning of time; (261) substantive rules;(262) our beginning; (263) common ground; (264) practical solutions; (265) sustainable futures; (266) precursors; (267) a saint; (268) the miraculous; (269) shipwrecks; (270) vindications; (271) selective interventions; (272) the affluent reader; (273) certitude; (274) transcendence; (275) nonformal alternatives; (276) explanation and social relevance; (277) mental hygiene; (278) lost time; (279) plenty;(280) the foreign policy of the Bush administration; (281) reaction pathways; (282) a normative order; (283) the neutrino; (284) eloquence; (285) the last human cannonball; (286) failure; (287) sanity; (288) myths and heroes; (289) psychoactive drugs; (290)labour-saving inventions; (291) a cause; (292) open skies; (293) an audio-visual language; (294) non-relativistic systems with dynamical symmetry; (295) a permanent fixture; (296) the best strain of bees; (297)treasure on the desert island;(298) pastures green; (299) artificial intelligence; (300) hope, faith, and a six-second ride
My text work, RE: WRITING (NOT YET THERE) 1993 – 2009, has been published in the very first edition of the new experimental journal rubric. The text is a version of a work that had been developed within the context of the Critical Communities project. The original version will be published shortly in the forthcoming experimental writing publication, RITE.
rubric is a new, experimental journal discussing art, writing, theory, and the points at which they intersect. The journal operates in a curatorial format, with contributors asked to respond to a specific theme or idea for each issue. The theme of the first issue is nascent. A PDF of the journal can be found here.
Image: The Pool, Holly Davey, pp. 10 and 42, in nascent, rubric
Backgound to the Issue, nascent
"Nascent as beginning to exist or to grow, to emerge or develop, is our concern in this first instance. This instance, this primary point of origination which shall inevitably progress to a later state, to another instance, to that which-is-not-first. This is where we shall site/cite ourselves, in this process of transference, of being-in-motion, of Being in-motion, as be-com-ing or coming-to-be in this developmental schema which charts a growth or emergence…what are the implications here for a progressive development? Where does this development stem from, and how does it operate in extension from its originary locus? If this is indeed a concern about origins as such, is there a co-dependency between the origin and this B/being(-)in motion, or are the two distinct entities?…but let us consider this concern another way: what form of developmental scheme or methodology may be applied to the art-work as such, if – in terms of ontology here – the work comes-to-be through this process or application of this logic of emergence, at what point does -work become art-work? Does this nascent state promote a terminological evolution from one aspect to another? What is this state and how does it purport to function?...This question of production, of ductus, or presently of ducere, of bringing forth or leading into being, positions us in relation to the systematic state of becoming".
The full PDF of the issue, Nascent can be found below
