ABSTRACT. In the following artist pages, poetic writing, dance and drawing are engaged as research methodologies that tilt toward embodiment, ambiguity, un-knowing and relationality as valuable resources in the terrain of affirmative difference. These pages ask, in the spirit of Vanessa Cameron-Lewis and Carl Mika’s introduction to this special issue, ‘How can we unknow together?’ ‘How can we train for unknowing with our collaborators?’ These poetic texts are very interested in the simultaneous possibilities of unknowing and precision. They are based on questions arising through choreographic notes that reflect on working relationships and workshop experiences. They combine handwritten drawing and digital design to explore the translation and documentation of creative practice, bringing touch, affect, collaboration and movement to the page. They are influenced by asemic writing – writing that gestures toward the possibility of written vocabulary while holding onto its illegibility, so that affect/feeling takes precedence over explanation. Key artistic influences here are US visual artists Ann Hamilton and Cy Twombly. And they are informed, too, by the principle of non-signifying but moving language central to the work of dancer and writer Simone Forti, a workshop of whose the author attended in 2006, merging textual and somatic improvisation, is referred to in the final two pages.

Keywords: unknowing; choreography; touch; affect; asemic writing

How to cite: longley, a. (2025). Department of unknowing studies. Knowledge Cultures, 13(3), 17–23. https://doi.org/10.22381/kc13320252

Received November 12, 2025 • Received in revised form November 27, 2025
Accepted November 27, 2025 • Available online December 1, 2025