Emma Cocker is a writer-artist based in Sheffield and Associate Professor in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University. Emma's research focuses on artistic processes and practices, and the performing of ‘thinking-in-action’ therein. Her practice unfolds restlessly along the threshold between writing/art, including experimental, performative and collaborative approaches, alongside a mode of ‘contiguous writing’ — a way of writing-with that seeks to touch upon rather than being explicitly about. Her writing is 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, 2013; 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.

Research Publication: Process in artistic research



Choreo-graphic Figures: Beginnings and Emergences, a collaborative research article reflecting on the first year of the project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (a collaboration between myself, Nikolaus Gansterer and Mariella Greil), is now published in the online journal RUUKKU: Studies in Artistic Research, in the forthcoming issue on Process in Artistic Research. 

About the issue: Process in artistic research: Various processes are an indistinguishable part of the practices of art and research. Ever since the 1960s when works of art evolving in time or transforming in shape were presented to viewers, listeners, and participants, ‘process' has been one of the magic words within contemporary art. Repetition, variation, and works based on interaction are examples of compositional methods that underline happening and change, instead of the complete, monolithic, and intact work of art. Comparing variations and analysing transformations are common methods of artistic research. In performing arts process is essential since the skill and knowledge of the artist are accumulated in a corporeal manner. Understanding is developed in interactions between musicians, actors or dancers; we can speak of encountering unknown layers or, in line with Michel Foucault, an archaeology of skill. Opening up and articulating artistic processes is considered one of the main tasks for artistic research. At the same time, developing new interactive processes is one of the societal duties of contemporary artists and artistic researchers. 

Research residency: Choreo-graphic Figures: Method Lab II





The interdisciplinary research project Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line, a collaboration between artist/performer Nikolaus Gansterer, choreographer Mariella Greil and writer-artist Emma Cocker is in residence at the AILab - Innovation Laboratory, Vienna from 13 July - 14 August 2015. In dialogue with a team of international critical interlocutors including Alex Arteaga, Lilia Mestre, Christine de Smedt, Werner Moebius, Joerg Piringer and other guests, Method Lab II extends the sharing of practice and working methods around the Notion of An/Notation &l An/Notation of Notion, towards the development of experimental Radical Scores of Attention. In cooperation with ImPulsTanzFestival Vienna two public openings of the Method Lab at AILab (Franz-Josefs-Kai 3, 1010 Vienna) are scheduled: 25 July 2015, 15:00 - 19:00 and 10 August 2015, 15:00 - 19:00. 

A paper related to this next phase of this project can be downloaded here