Emma Cocker is a writer-artist whose research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of thinking-in-action therein. Cocker’s language-based artistic research comprises a matrix of writing, reading and conversation practices, including diverse process-oriented, dialogic-collaborative and aesthetic-poetic approaches to working with and through language. 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?, 2024. Cocker is co-founder of the international Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. She is Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University.

Book Launch: Communion

Book launch for Communion: Ben Judd
published by Black Dog Publishing, 2014.
14 May 6.30-8.30pm at
Artwords
20-22 Broadway Market
London E8 4QJ

Communion: Ben Judd, published by Black Dog Publishing, 2014 is survey of Judd’s work from 2000 – 2013, including commissioned essays by Emma Cocker, Alun Rowlands and Pandora Syperek on his work and related themes. ISBN13: 978 1 908966 33 9

Publication: Revolve:R Edition II



Based on visual correspondence, Revolve:R is a collaboration exploring the exchange of ideas via physical and tactile forms of communication. The project results in the publication of limited-edition book-works, giclée prints, poetry and short films: resulting artworks are presented in print, online, and at events and exhibitions. Revolve:R extends beyond national, linguistic and disciplinary boundaries with a strong collaborative ethos which initiates and develops networks between local, national and international arts communities. The Revolve:R project is active in supporting early and mid-career artists through the publication, exhibitions and promotion of their work and practice. 

Revolve:R edition two: Works by: Alastair Whitton (SA), Ricarda Vidal (UK), Linnea Vedder (USA), Sam Treadaway (UK), Laura Santamaria (IT), David Shillinglaw (UK), Kate Street (UK), Clare Thornton (UK), Solveig Settemsdal (UK), Daniel Smedly, (UK), Matt Rowe (UK), Pietro Reviglio (IT), James Rigler (UK), Bernd Reichert (B), Rammatik (FO), Juneau Projects (UK), One Five West (UK), Domingo Martinez (ES), John Matthias (UK), Anna Mace (UK), Julie McCaldon (UK), Sharon Kivland (F), Hayden Kays (UK), Peter Hoiss (AT), Alice Hendy (UK), Verena Hägler (G), Patrick Galway (UK), Steven Fowler (UK), Stephanie Douet (UK), Todd DiCiurcio (USA), Emma Cocker (UK), Anna Cady (UK), Richard Broomhall (UK), Oscar Bandtlow (UK), Maria Anastassiou (CY), Diana Ali (UK).
www.revolve-r.com

The first 25 copies of the bookwork pre-ordered will also receive a limited edition giclée print#. Options to order the publication of Revolve:R, edition two can be found here: http://www.revolve-r.com/index.php/shop/

Events: Writing/Performance


I will be participating in a series of LADA Study Room Sessions (organised by Maddie Costa, Diana Damian and Mary Paterson) that aim to explore, rethink and rename a writing practice that emerges from performance. This writing might be in tension with performance, or in conversation, or might forget it altogether. It is loosely associated with criticism, documentation, poetry and conceptual art, and might be all or none of these things. We don’t have a history for it, although it is rooted in traditions. We don’t have a place for it, although it appears everywhere. We don’t have a name for it, but could christen it with you. The three events, organised in collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency, will approach this writing from three directions: How do we write? Who do we write for? What comes next?

Conference Paper: Penelopean Mêtis and the Weaver-Coder’s Kairos


My conference paper ‘Live Coding/Weaving — Penelopean Mêtis and the Weaver-Coder’s Kairos’ has been accepted as part of the forthcoming International Conference on Live Coding, hosted by ICSRiM in the School of Music, University of Leeds, UK, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Live Coding Research Network. http://iclc.livecodenetwork.org/

 A list of contributors can be found here.

Abstract
Drawing on my experience as a critical interlocutor within the Weaving Codes, Coding Weaves project (2014-2016), in this paper I propose potential points of connection between Ancient weaving and live coding, considering both practices through the prism of the Ancient Greek concept of techné, a species of tactical knowledge combining the principles of mêtis (cunning intelligence) and kairos (opportune timing). Specifically, this enquiry addresses the human qualities of attention, cognitive agility and tactical intelligence activated within both live coding and live weaving, arguing that such practices might have potential as ‘practices of the self’, as a means for cultivating a more critical mode of human agency and subjectivity.

Publication: Twenty Years of MAKE: Back to the Future of Women's Art


My interview with Helen Chadwick, Indifference in Difference has been published in Twenty Years of MAKE: Back to the Future of Women's Art, Maria Walsh, Mo Throp (I.B.Tauris, 2015), which is now available.


During the 1970s, adding 'women's' to 'art' was a powerfully political act. Fuelled by the momentum of the women's liberation movement, artists, art historians, critics and curators began to explore the women's art practice, as distinct from men's, and to challenge its invisibility in the established art world and historical canon. In the 1980s, they continued to creatively critique representations of female sexuality, and in the 1990s, some began to embrace the 'post-feminist' idea of difference and the performance of gender. Throughout this pivotal period, the MAKE magazine offered a unique platform for academics, artists and arts professionals to critically engage with women's art. Though the need to talk about 'women's art' seemed to lose some of its political urgency in the early 2000s, many artists, art historians and art students are now once again explicitly engaging with feminist art histories and art practices as possible models and precedents for resistance. Now is the time to revisit the past, in order to understand and galvanise the energy of the present. Gathering together the work of eminent writers such as Griselda Pollock and Marina Warner, on celebrated artists such as Helen Chadwick, Sarah Lucas and The Guerrilla Girls, this unparalleled anthology of material from the MAKE archive allows us to trace the lineages and links between then and now.

Contributors: Rachel Armstrong | Fiona Barber | Pennina Barnett | Christine Battersby | Monica Bohm-Duchen | Chila Burman | David Burrows | Susan Butler | Deborah Cameron | Helen Chadwick | Janice Cheddie | Laura Cottingham | Marilyn Crabtree | Emma Cocker | Susan Croft | Anna Douglas | Catherine Elwes | Carole Enahoro | Simon Ford | Rebecca Fortnum | Lorraine Gamman | Pam Gerrish Nunn | The Guerrilla Girls | Judith Halberstam | Gill Houghton | Janice Jefferies | Joanna Krysa | Kathy Kubicki | Claire MacDonald | Aoife MacNamara | Rosy Martin | Marsha Meskimmon | Sadie Murdoch | Roxane Permar | Sadie Plant | Griselda Pollock | Nancy Proctor | Shirley Read | Heidi Reitmaier | Hilary Robinson | Paula Smithard | Mo Throp | Yvonne Volkart | Maria Walsh | Marina Warner | Liz Wells | Margaret Whitford | Val Williams | Linda Wilson Green


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