OPENING TO THE UNEXPECTED: Nine Notes on a Protocol-Based Practice
 
Emma Cocker
 
The exhibition emerges from an exchange between three painters engaged in a three-round, protocol-based process that explores painting itself as a form of response. Taking another’s painting as a source or reference, each painter responds by making a new painting; the source is then exchanged and the process repeated. In the final round, the resulting responses become the sources for a further set of paintings. The exhibition stages all nine paintings in new relation.
 
The following nine notes — protocol, re/source, response, duration, medium, attempts, interference, interface and openings — respond to the exhibition, its conceptual framework and working process. They draw attention to overlapping conditions within a recursive process — to the interplay of relations and agencies, of correspondences and differences, and to the inherent tension between protocol and unpredictability. Together, they describe a way of working in which a protocol might create conditions for what is not yet known.
 
PROTOCOL
A protocol establishes the governing rules, procedures and processes for how something will or should be done — setting guidelines for conduct and communication; determining the structures, systems and terms of engagement through which data, information or even material content might be transmitted, received and responded to. Its organisational principles seemingly create transparency of process, rendered as a series of steps or a diagrammatic plan. Whilst a protocol can appear clear and systematic, it might operate less as a linear chain of causal commands and more like contingent conditions for inviting the unknown. Through repeated iteration and material inhabitation, a network of circulation, variation, negotiation and transformation might emerge. Rules cannot anticipate all outcomes in advance — herein lies both the risk and potential of a protocol that remains open to the unplanned-for.
 
RE/SOURCE
Source material — the originating reference, an initiating support or base for what then follows, inspiring what is yet to come. Whilst ‘resource’ is seized and utilized to solve a problem or in the service of preconceived outcome or goal, the ‘source’ is an inceptual point of influence, from which something (else) begins to flow. Resource is put to use — source has a will of its own. As a spring wells forth into stream or river, so source material surges with promise of poiesis, gesturing towards something yet to be brought into being. Here, source is not a passive recipient of attention, but rather an active agency that sets something in motion. To begin from another’s painting as one’s source is to be carried into difference — to be set off along an unfamiliar path. The source is an invitation — it calls forth the possibility of response.
 
RESPONSE
Response is action moved by another’s call — it speaks back or attempts to answer. It perceives the other with genuine interest and commits to return their call. Response might be material, affective, conceptual, associative — it is to offer a reply. Reply is not replication, not copying or mirroring back unchanged, rather an act of repeatedly folding back to create renewed relation. Response is a tentative movement towards dialogue with another, the delicate entry into an emergent process of conversation. However, communication between different languages might require some form of translation or mediation — at times, an interlocutor or intermediary is necessary as a way of bridging the gulf or gap between, helping to locate a common ground. Still, response is not translation nor appropriation — not the conversion of the other into a known language of one’s own. It is not the process of rendering familiar that which at first might appear impenetrable or strange. Responsivity is mutual — a form of dynamic co-responding, the reciprocity of correspondence.
 
DURATION
Responsivity is also a matter of timing — of knowing how and when to respond to another, indeed, how and when to take one’s time or hold back. Too swift a response can cause the other to recoil or withdraw — appearing too rushed or forceful, only superficially or predictably engaged. A response is not made as such, rather it arrives, it happens. Duration creates space for something to emerge. To spend time with another’s painting is to open oneself to it, to be accompanied by it — to welcome another’s painting as studio companion. It is to enter into shared residence — the willingness to really be with. Patience, patience. Waiting — and letting a response appear in its own time. Here, it is not easy to discern when a new painting begins — for it might well have begun before the painting, which is not to say it is conceived in advance.
 
MEDIUM
Within this painterly process, the artist is not leading as such, nor are they only following the original source. Rather, the artist occupies a medial position. Medial — in or from the middle, that which holds a middle place, inhabiting the space between. Like a medium, the artist becomes a conduit or carrier — an intermediary working in the midst of multiple forces and agencies. Through the tentative touch of different material processes — of layering, tracing, adding, masking, covering, scaling, morphing, of painting over, of changing colour, of working freely, of applying constraint, of collapsing and expanding — the artist tries to open into painting as a medium, as a channel of communication between original source and emergent response. In time, the pull of the source painting will no doubt yield to the call of the new — the artist must remain sensitive to this tilt in awareness, the inescapable transition in focus.
 
ATTEMPTS
With the beginning of each new painting — an attempt is made. This attempt involves an intrepid gesture towards something that is not yet visible, not yet known. Here, the process might proceed through gradual trying and testing, through feeling a way rather than knowing the outcome in advance. Each attempt is a way of tempting, of drawing or enticing the new into being. There are times when the attempt might fall flat — registering as failure, as awkward, clumsy or somehow wrong. In practice, it is often easier to discern what is not working than what works. The list of negations can be named — not a copy, not a replication, not mimicry nor echo as such. Failure is more than an inevitable reality of the creative process — rather failing can create emergent conditions from which something surprising might arise. A failed painting might become a ground for beginning anew. Sometimes something is so wrong it is right.
 
INTERFERENCE
Every new iteration carries a trace of what came before — each painting cannot be severed from the memory and materiality of paintings past. Paintings bleed and seep into other paintings. Interference can refer to unwanted noise or random disturbance within a given system — the disruption and distortion of external influence, the presence of static or rogue signals that interrupt or corrupt smooth transmission. It is felt through the friction of incalcitrant materials, in moments of misunderstanding or accident, or even in the sheer resistance of another’s work. Yet interference need not be understood solely as disruption. Left without interference, processes might tend towards stasis, gradually losing the tensions that sustain change. Interference unsettles that stasis — keeping the process dynamic, open to transformation.
 
INTERFACE
If interference describes an energetic relation between things, then interface might refer to the between itself. Paradoxically perhaps, an interface operates as both a boundary and a conduit — it is a boundary that remains porous. It is a thin space where surfaces meet, where difference encounters difference, indeed, a site where difference might be both threatened and preserved. Yet, rather than collapsing two surfaces into one, an interface might create a zone of contact, of in-touchness and potential resonance — in which each can register the presence of the other without becoming indistinguishable from it, without being wholly assimilated or absorbed. The encounter does not require dissolution — rather it enables relation to emerge through receptivity to the other. The interface is an active process that not only mediates an encounter, but also participates in determining what forms of relation become possible.
 
OPENINGS
Whilst boundaries exist, an interface happens. A boundary is not inherently interfacial — it must become so. To become an interface is to undergo a transformation through which a boundary becomes susceptible to encounter. Yet this cannot be done through force or will, for a boundary or surface often refuses to yield to pressure. Stable surfaces soften through the gentle attunement of attention — opening, in turn, rather than being opened. Here, an opening might arrive as a glimpse, a moment of breakthrough or revelation. Still, sometimes surfaces remain resistant; attention encounters opacity — nothing opens. Whether an opening occurs depends, in part, upon the kairotic coincidence of an emerging opening and a receptive witness. Within this encounter, the opening is neither simply there to be perceived nor produced by the witness, but comes into being through mutual attunement — appearing as an aperture through which the unexpected might come into view.

Emma Cocker is a writer-artist and Associate Professor in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University