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.

Event: Method Lab opening



I am currently working in Vienna with Nikolaus Gansterer and Mariella Greil on the project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line. Our Method Lab II focuses on the sharing of practice and working methods around the notation of notion and the materiality of language. Throughout July and August, we (the key researchers) have been working closely with our invited ‘sputniks’ (Alex Arteaga, Christine de Smedt and Lilia Mestre) and critical guests (Werner Moebius and Joerg Piringer) towards the development of Radical Scores of Attention - an experimental working process combining three interrelated modes of practice: (A) Practices of attention; (B) Live artistic exploration; (C) Practices of conversation. On Monday 10 August we host a public event for testing an experimental score system which brings these three different modes of practice into relation. Specifically, we propose to test the way in which practices of attention and conversation impact upon artistic exploration, as a means for sharpening, focusing or redirecting one’s attention.

10 August 2015, 15:00 – 19:00
Method Lab Opening II at the residency laboratory: AIL, Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, Vienna, Austria
15.00 > The Method Lab will be open to the public, and the key researchers will be available to informally discuss the project, Choreo-graphic Figures. Deviations from the Line
16.00 > Live Exploration. The Live Exploration will be followed by an opportunity for discussion around the issues and questions emerging within the Method Lab.