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.

Research project: Choreo-graphic Figures




From 4 – 7 June, I was in Vienna working with Nikolaus Gansterer and Mariella Greil within the context of our collaborative research project, Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations of the Line. Specifically, we will be working together to develop a page-based contribution to be submitted to the forthcoming issue of Performance Research Journal, Vol. 20, No. 6: ‘On An/Notations’ (December 2015). Co-Editors: Scott deLahunta, Kim Vincs and Sarah Whatley (Deakin University [Motion.Lab] AUS & Coventry University [Centre for Dance Research] UK).


Notion of Notation & Notation of Notion

Drawing on findings from the first year of the research project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (specifically from field-work undertaken during a month-long research residency within ImPulsTanz [Vienna, July – August 2014] & within the context of a one-week residency/workshop working with researchers at apass [Centre of Advanced Performance & Scenography Studies, Brussels, Feb, 2015]), our intent is to share & put pressure on our recent explorations around both the ‘notion of notation’ & the ‘notation of notion’, exploring the format of a page-based annotated performance score, itself a diagramming of the multiple & at times competing forces & energies operative within artistic collaborative practice. We propose to investigate notation (& its related technologies) through two concepts: figuring & (choreo-graphic) figure: (1) The Notion/Notation of Figuring: We use the term ‘figuring’ to describe a state of emergence or experiential shift, the barely perceptible movements & transitions at the cusp of awareness within the process of “sense-making”, asking what different systems of notation can be developed for cultivating awareness of & for marking and identifying the moments of “figuring” within live investigative action? (2) The Notion/Notation of Figure: We use the term ‘figure’ to describe the point at which figuring coalesces into a recognizable + repeatable form, asking how might the performed ‘figure’ be a system of notation in & of itself? Our shared quest is both for a system of notation for honouring the process of figuring (as a live investigative event) & for “choreo-graphic” figures for making tangible & communicating these significant moments within the unfolding journey of collaborative practice.