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.

Exhibition: The Italic I

The Italic I @ Project Space Plus,
Lincoln School of Fine & Performing Arts
3 – 14 November 2014


The Italic I is a collaborative interdisciplinary project by Emma Cocker and Clare Thornton, comprising new sculptural, time-based and textual works for exhibition, animated by a series of live events. Within The Italic I, Cocker and Thornton approach the gallery as gymnasium, a training space for exploring the different states of potential made possible through voluntarily surrendering to the event of a repeated fall. The Italic I involves an attempt to slow and extend the duration of falling in order to suspend and elaborate upon its discrete phases or scenes, which in turn sheds light on the process of artistic collaboration itself and the making of meaning within creative labour.







Images: The Italic I, Emma Cocker and Clare Thorton, project space plus, Lincoln, 2014. Photography: 1-3 Emma Cocker, 4: Tom Hemming.

 Event Programme
In the second week of exhibition, The Italic I will be animated by a series of live events including live performance actions. a performance reading and publication launch, and a reading group. The artists will also be working in the space at specific times.

Launch Event + Performance Reading
Tuesday 11 November: 17.30 – 19.30, 18.00 Performance Reading
In conjunction with their exhibition The Italic I at project space plus, Cocker and Thornton have produced an artists’ publication, which they will also present in the form of a performance reading. Booking advised. http://theitalici.eventbrite.co.uk

Reading Group
Tuesday 11 November, 11.00 – 12.00
Cocker and Thornton will host a reading group focusing on extracts from Erin Manning’s, Relationscapes: Movement, Art and Philosophy (2012) as a means for generating discussion around the ideas and concerns relating to their current exhibition. Booking advised. http://theitalici-readinggroup.eventbrite.co.uk

The Italic I is supported through funding by the Arts Council of England - Grants for the Arts.

Research: Weaving Codes - Coding Weaves


From 5 - 11 October I will be in Denmark (Copenhagen and then Aarhus) participating in the first phase of the research project Weaving Codes – Coding Weaves. The project will unfold through conversations, presentations and the sharing of practice through a Threads and Modelling Workshop at the Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, followed by workshops at the University of Aarhus. With Ellen Harlizius-Klück, Alex McLean, Dave Griffith, Geoff Cox, Eva Andersson Strand, Giovanni Fanfani and Flavia Carraro.

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


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