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.

Research Event: Care + Attend (Unconditional Love)


I will be collaborating with my NTU colleague, Joanne Lee, as invited 'curators' for the forthcoming artistic research conference event, Unconditional Love, organised by SAR Society of Artistic Research, April 30 - May 1 2015, Chelsea College of Arts / University of the Arts London. More about our proposed session Care + Attend below.


Image: Joanne Lee, Pam Flett Press, Issue 1, 'Call yourself a bloody professional'


Care + Attend comprises a constellation of fragments and extracts - of different intensities and durations - where the exposition of research emerges as a poetic and performative event, generating moments of potential resonance and dialogue. This event explores the theme Unconditional Love through the principles (perhaps even methodologies) of care and attention, as applied within specific (artistic) practices of both the everyday and of the self. Beginning with the observation that both curate and curiosity have shared etymology in the term ‘care’, Care + Attend seeks to develop a research vocabulary based on receptivity, openness, fidelity, integrity, intimacy, friendship and commitment (whilst not ignoring the parallel principles of distraction, inattention, the act of closing one’s eyes or of looking away). Cocker and Lee have invited a range of artists & writers to share and reflect on their own processes, philosophies and politics of care and attention, and to present these through live performance, screenings and spoken word.

Publication: Grafting / Propriety


I have been commissioned to write a new text for the publication Grafting Propriety: From Stitch to the Drawn Line, by Danica Maier (Black Dog Publishing, 2015). Grafting Propriety showcases the work of Maier whose artwork follows the domestic object and drawing, with a particular interest in stitch, textiles and the decorative. Using subtle slippages and moments of detail to transgress propriety the artist questions the role of the object as well as the role of women in relation to labour. Grafting Propriety explores how textile agendas can be addressed without the use of the material, for example how textile methodology can be recreated in drawing and the drawn stitched line. 

My text 'Sampler of Samplers: Repeating Repeats, Repeats', addresses various ideas around repetition. This research and writing has connections to the current work I am engaged in with Clare Thornton (as part of the project The Italic I, where we are currently working on a text entitled The Italic I: How Repeating Repeats - on the Differential and the Interval Between) and my involvement in the research project Weaving Codes / Coding Weaves where I am further investigating Penelopian labour. Below is a version of the text.

Event + Writing: Margins of Indeterminacy


Exhibition Tour
Agnieska Polska and Raphael Hefti
Nottingham Contemporary
17th December 2014: 6pm - 6.45pm

I have been invited to explore both exhibitions – Agnieska Polska and Raphael Hefti - through the prism of my own research interests, in relation to the process of practice and of ‘not knowing’. My introduction will focus around the idea of ‘Margins of Indeterminacy’ drawing also on a text I have recently produced for Camera Austria, responding to Hefti’s work in the current exhibition. A version of the text can be read below.

Raphael Hefti, installation view of Raw Draw at RaebervonStenglin, 2014. 
Courtesy the artist and RaebervonStenglin

Publication/Writing: Writing Beyond Resurrection



I have been commissioned to produce a text for a forthcoming publication by Compass Live Art, where seven artists and writers have been invited to contribute a short provocation each exploring different aspects of Live Art. My text provisionally entitled ‘Writing Beyond Resurrection’, explores ideas around live-ness and writing (or even language more broadly), provoked by the live encounter with various works in the recent Compass Live Art festival. 

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