I am currently in the process of working on or contributing to various forthcoming publications which will hopefully be in print next year (2024) including: ‘Confluence of Influence, and the Struggle of Differentiation’ a textual artefact and accompanying research exposition in Contingent Agencies (eds.) Alex Arteaga and Nikolaus Gansterer; ‘Liberated from Language: Punctuation’s Performativity in the Absence of Words’ — artists’ pages in Performing Punctuation, (eds.) Julieanna Preston and Anna Brown; ‘Choreo-graphic Writing: Towards More-than-one Means of Inscription’ — a collaborative chapter and research exposition with Nikolaus Gansterer and Mariella Greil in Writing Choreography: Extending the Conventions of Dance, (eds.) Leena Rouhiainen, Kirsi Heimonen, Rebecca Hilton and Chrysa Parkinson. I am also now in the final stages of working with BEAM Editions on the design for my second collection of creative prose, How Do You Do? More on these various publications soon!
Open Studios
While I often work in collaboration with other artistic researchers on durational projects unfolding over a number of years, where a residency space, site-specific context or even an online environment are approached as a live "laboratory" for shared exploration, my own ongoing studio space is at Exchange Place Studios, Sheffield (part of Yorkshire Artspace). Every year in November, studio-holders are invited to ‘open up’ their studios providing an opportunity for wider publics to explore the studio spaces, meet the artists and find out more about the diversity of creative practices within the city. The studios at @yartspace are opening up on 18 -19 November 2023. My studio will be open on Sunday 19 November 2023, providing the opportunity for me to gather together and share a selection of the publications and artists’ bookworks resulting from my various collaborations, artistic research activities and other writing projects.
Tickets are free and available here:
General booking: https://yorkshireartspace.eventbrite.com/
Exchange Place: https://exchangeplace.eventbrite.com/
Publication: Artistic Research Does #7 - Tactics for Not Knowing
It is a decade since my essay ‘Tactics for Not Knowing: Preparing for the Unexpected’ was first published in On Not Knowing: How Artists Think (Black Dog Publishing, 2013) edited by Elizabeth Fisher and Rebecca Fortnum. The text has just been re-published with a translation into Portuguese, as part of the Artistic Research Does series (published by i2ADS – Institute of Research in Art, Design and Society, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto).
The revised version of ‘Tactics for Not Knowing’ in Artistic Research Does #7 offers two further interventions in the form of annotations. In one column of margin notes, I share additional reflections, referring to some of my more recent artistic research projects and collaborations that continue to resonate with the concerns of the original text. In parallel, a second column of margin notes comprises the titles of additional pieces of contiguous writing drawn from two collections of my creative prose writing, The Yes of the No (2016) and How Do You Do? (2024).
Within the online version of the publication these margin notes include hyperlinks that enable the reader to access these different thought-fragments of writing. See here.
The PDF version can be downloaded here.
The publication was launched on 26 October 2023, along with the release of Derivas, a publication by Doctoral researchers in Art Education. Images from the launch below.
Images: @i2ads 2023
Publication: VIS - Circulating Practices
Textorium: Collaborative Writing-Reading with/in Public Space is a collaborative article/exposition by Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Cordula Daus, Vidha Saumya, and Lena Séraphin, published in VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Issue 10, Circulating Practices (October 2023).
About the article/exposition:
See exposition here.
Textorium: Collaborative Writing-Reading with/in Public Space is a language-based artistic research project that explores collaborative score-based approaches to live, situated writing-reading practices, for attending to experiential aspects of situated embodiment with/in public space. Between 30 May—4 June 2022, five artist-writers (Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Cordula Daus, Vidha Saumya and Lena Séraphin) met in Vaasa, Finland, to engage in a process of observational and collective score-based writing-reading with/in public space. With its conceptual anchor in Georges Perec’s short book An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (1975/2010), this enquiry evolves a distinctive approach that foregrounds a corporeal, sensorial and bodily approach to language, where writing and reading are conceived as a collaborative undertaking rather than a solitary endeavour. Working with and through different language-based practices — including performative, poetic, and phenomenology-oriented approaches — the research explores the potentiality of emergent spaces (perhaps even of emergent temporalities, subjectivities and collectivities) produced through the interweaving of shared writing and reading practices, as the cyclical rhythms of writing/reading intermingle with the circulating movements, momentums and flows of public space. Through developing and testing various embodied, corporeal, sensorial, and collaborative approaches, this research enquiry advocates the transformative capacity of language-based artistic research for cultivating new “ecologies of attention” (Yves Citton, 2017). This shared enquiry explores the critical potentiality of our “linguistic bodies” (Di Paolo, Cuffari, and De Jaegher, 2018) as sites of both resistance and affirmation.
About the Issue
See Issue overview here.
VIS issue 10 was published 20 October 2023. The theme is Circulating Practices. This issue presents six expositions, and a recorded conversation, that in their own way are discussing and challenging the circular, as a practice and method, as a model of collaboration, as a theme and as a symbol. Editors are Cecilia Roos and Gunhild Mathea Husvik-Olaussen. Issue number 10 of VIS, Circulating Practices, focus on collaborative artistic constellations that explore temporality and dramaturgy in the exchange of practice and methodology. Collaboration in artistic research often leads to unexpected and process-oriented discoveries. How do we define and situate research collaborations? How do matter, direction and time affectively interact? Who do we identify as the collaborating agents in an artistic research process and how can we discuss authorship/copyright in a co-creative whole? In the editorial work, it has been of interest to look at how the artistic process is reflected in the expositions. Documenting an artistic process can be sensitive and multifaceted. In the context of time-based art, interesting discussions arise regarding the enduring nature of documentation and how it relates to the temporary and processual materiality of the projects. This issue of VIS presents six expositions, and a recorded conversation, that in their own way are discussing and challenging the circular, as a practice and method, as a model of collaboration, as a theme and as a symbol.
Event: The Expanded Librarian
Text+Image relations in post-photographic contexts and literary environments
On Friday 15 September 2023, I was an invited speaker (alongside artist Peter Liversidge) within the frame of a research group devised by artists Beverley Carruthers and Wiebke Leister, which investigates contemporary modes of collaborative image-text-production. My presentation involved me giving a sense of my own language-based artistic research practice, before talking about my involvement as co-founder of the Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group for language-based artistic research.
Publication: Practice Sharing of Language-based Artistic Research
Published in Autumn 2023, PRACTICE SHARING II is the second online presentation by the Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research (Society for Artistic Research). Over 60 individuals and collaborations are included in this second ‘sharing’ of language-based artistic research practices presented on the research catalogue.
See PRACTICE SHARING II -
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1538250/1538251
With contributions from -- Annette Arlander -- Dave Ball -- Sue Brind & Jim Harold -- Katrina Brown -- Arturas Bukauskas -- Julia Calver -- Kimberly Campanello -- Delphine Chapuis Schmitz -- Emma Cocker -- Joanna Cook -- Adélia Santos Costa -- Michael Croft -- Cordula Daus -- Kostas Daflos -- Janhavi Dhamankar & Minou Tsambika Polleros -- C.C. Elian -- Martin.P. Eccles -- Federico Eisner Sagues -- João Emediato -- Kate Fahey -- Rob Flint -- Lynda Gaudreau -- Juan Pablo Gaviria Bedoya -- Sandra Golubjevaite -- Sara Gomez -- Vanessa Graf -- Maria Hedman Hvitfeldt, Mamdooh Afdile & Alexander Skantze -- Kirsi Heimonen & Leena Rouhiainen -- rosie heinrich with An_assembling_“I” -- Steffi Hofer -- Marianne Holm Hansen -- Rolf Hughes -- James Jack -- Benjamin Jenner -- Christina Marie Jespersen -- Molly Joyce -- Krystyna Kulisiewicz -- Andrea Liu -- Ling Liu -- Barb Macek -- Yorgos Maraziotis -- Klaus Maunuksela -- Annie Morrad -- Amelie Mourgue d'Algue -- Antrianna Moutoula -- Peta Murray -- Elena Peytchinska & Thomas Ballhausen -- Julieanna Preston -- Maryam Ramezankhani -- Maya Rasker -- Sarah Rinderer -- Hanns Holger Rutz -- Sarah Scaife -- Lena Séraphin -- Marianna Stefanitsi -- Anie Toole -- Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec -- Litó Walkey -- Kai Ziegner --
Through the gathering of this second PRACTICE SHARING specific fields of resonance emerge including trans-linguality, embodied languaging, voice and vocalisation, site and situative writing, fictional approaches, text as material, experimental reading, just to mention a few. Rather than a definitive or exhaustive archive or survey of the field, the PRACTICE SHARING platform aims to provide a starting point from which future conversations and collaborations might emerge.
PRACTICE SHARING II is co-edited by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin. For more on the Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research and to join the mailing list see - https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/835089/835129
Event: Convocation - A Gathering of Language-based Artistic Research
LINK TO programme here.
Taking place at the Zentrum Fokus Forschung, University of Applied Arts in Vienna (3 – 6 October 2023), CONVOCATION II was a gathering of expanded language-based artistic research hosted by the Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group for Language-based Artistic Research. Rather than a public conference or symposium as such, CONVOCATION II had a more personal format, allowing for exchange and conversation between the 65 contributors, especially through a process of ‘practice sharing’. The focus of CONVOCATION II was on language-based artistic research “practices”. How can we share research “practices”? What new formats and models might be required? What happens as different practices are brought into relation, into dialogue, into proximity? How might we practise together?
With contributions from: Gretel Acosta -- Louise Adkins -- adO/Aptive (Barnabás Bácsi, Mel Sasha Berger, Martin Gius, Melanie Haberl, Daniel Hüttler, Saara Hukka & Janina Weißengruber) -- Ruth Anderwald & Leonhard Grond – Katrina Brown & Emma Cocker -- Julia Calver -- Beverley Carruthers -- Delphine Chapuis Schmitz & Ines Marita Schärer -- Cordula Daus & Charlotta Ruth -- (D)raft ( Sarah Jackson, Delphine Grass, Helena Hunter, Hannah van Hove, and Maria Gil Ulldemolins) -- Bogdan Florea & Ileana Gherghina -- Gabrielė Gervickaitė -- Sara Gomez -- Miriana Faieta -- Rob Flint -- Sabina Holzer -- Anouk Hoogendoorn & Mariana Renthel -- Sophie Hope & Henry Mulhall -- Benjamin Jenner -- Aleksandra Komsta & Cecilie Fang -- Linnea Langfjord Kristensen -- Wiebke Leister -- Barb Macek -- Tatjana Macić -- Cristiana de Marchi -- Elke Mark -- Adelheid Mers -- Antrianna Moutoula -- Anna Nygren -- Elena Peytchinska & Thomas Ballhausen -- Emílio Remelhe -- Simon Roloff -- Lena Séraphin -- Erika Tsimbrovsky -- The un | common ground collective (Regina Dürig, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Phoenix Savage) -- Litó Walkey -- Kai Ziegner.
CONVOCATION II was co-organised by Emma Cocker, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, with the support of the Zentrum Fokus Forschung.
Lectures: Being in the Midst - Approaches to Language-based Artistic Research
On the 8 May 2023, I gave a lecture to MFA students at UniArts, Helsinki, called Towards the Not-Yet-Known: Writing as an Artistic Research Practice. In this talk, I explored different ways of writing from the site of practice, writing as practice. Towards a mode of writing the not-yet-known, where content is not already known in advance, but rather emerges through the material and poetic process of working-with language.
***
In June 2023, I was invited as a guest speaker to talk about language-based artistic research (especially through the lens of embodied practices) within the frame of the EU4ART differences project. Drawing on some of my recent collaborations, in my lecture Being in the Midst: An Approach to Language-based Artistic Research, I explored different performative, process-orientated and embodied approaches to working with and through language, sharing my evolving approach to language-based artistic research. EU4ART differences is supported by Horizon2020’s SWAF (Science with and for Society) programme. The EU4ART alliance comprises art academies in Riga, Rome, Budapest, and Dresden. A recording of the session can be found here.