Reader in Fine Art & Relational Practices
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a London based academic, artist, composer and improviser interested in the materiality and musicality of language. Her practice and research evolve across multiple interconnected work zones – conceptual writing, new musical composition, artist-publishing, performance and curating (here.here concert series, Cosy Nook). Ultimately devising situations to explore and play (with) our interior or exterior landscape and each other, through and beyond words.
Bio
Emmanuelle studied Photography in the 1980s with Mick Williamson at Sir John Cass (now Metropolitan University). She then completed an MA in Fine Art at the Slade School of Art in 1996 under Stuart Brisley and Lis Rhodes. After a few years of part-time lecturing on the Photography degree and the MA in Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design she was appointed senior lecturer at UCA Farnham in the Photography department in 1999. She became a Reader in 2012.
bookRoom is an experimental post-digital publishing platform engaged with editorial, curatorial and critical research through a number of interrelated activities: research degrees, publications, symposiums and other public events. bookRoom has surveyed the impact of digital technologies on emerging publishing practices and the parallel histories and practices of the artist book and the photobook.
Through her continuing commitment to both education and practice-based research Emmanuelle tries to foster new enquiry across image, music and text, fostering along the way collaborative projects and communities both locally and internationally, in academic and non-academic contexts. She is inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the 21st century University.
“The combination of technical skills and civic responsibility, a concern for social and environmental sustainability, and a discerning relationship to consumerism, are the core values of the contemporary multi-versity. (2013)”.
Emmanuelle is a long standing attendee and co-facilitator of Eddie Prevost’s legendary London Improvisation Workshop, and co-founder of Bouche Bée improvising duo with Petri Huurinainen (guitar) and occasional guests. She is a member of the Wandelweiser international network of composers, her music and scores are distributed by Edition Wandelweiser. She is one of the facilitators of the Composer Meet Composer mentoring project.
She has performed in many of the festivals and institutions dealing with Live art and Experimental Music in the UK and abroad. She is regularly invited to run performance workshops; Marres house for contemporary culture, Maastricht (2018), N.I.D Ahmedabad (2013), Beaux Arts/ ENSA, Limoges (2018), Tate Modern (2018), to name a few recent ones.
Between 2007 and 2015 Emmanuelle was part of the small team running the Centre des Livres d’Artistes in St Yrieix, France. Her imprint MOIedition gathers her text scores and other artist multiples since 2001. Her artist books are held in many public collections including V&A, Tate Britain, the Poetry Library at SouthBank Centre, The Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, Centre Des Livres d’Artistes, Printed Matters, PS1, Chelsea school of Art, UWE.
Further information:
Research statement
Emmanuelle’s practice manifests as literary, poetic, and sonic compositions, occasions for their activation (on the page, installation, performance, workshop) and resulting image, text or sound works.
She understands walking reading and writing as simultaneous acts of marking and reading (space), be it a page or a path, inspired by the notion of a ballad, which in French is both a song and a walk. SLOW MARCH (2001), roadworks (1996/98), JUNGLE FEVER (2011), PRAELUDERE (2013), A direction out there – readwalking (with) Thoreau (2021), Walking in Air (2021 – ongoing).
Other projects are based on appropriation through (re)writing or reading of literary works. Reading (story of) O (Uniformbooks, 2015), Ode (owed) to O (Edition Wandelweiser, 2017), Black and Blue (2020), Song of an Intention (2019), Still Light (2020), and Readwalking (with) thoreau (2021), what is left if we are not the world (2022).
Peer reviewed writing and other published texts
- Walking in Air, co-authored with Will Montgomery, Performance Research ‘On Air’, Vol 26 issue 7 (Sept 2022).
- Photobooks &, Matt Johnston, edited by E. Waeckerlé (Onomatopee, 2021) ISBN 978-94-93148-65-9.
- Becoming One: a duologue in practice, with Manuel Vason in Photography and Culture Volume 11, 2018 – Issue 2: The Theatre of Photography.
- RISE with your class not from it, edited by E. Waeckerlé (bookRoom press, 2016), ISBN 9780957682870. With essays by E. Waeckerlé, Stefan Szczelkun, Rebekah Taylor.
- Code X Paper, Ink, Pixel and Screen, edited by E. Waeckerlé and D. Aldred (bookRoom Press, 2015) ISBN 978 0 9576828 3 2.
- The Book is Alive! edited by E. Waeckerlé, and R. Sawdon-Smith, (RGAP, 2013) ISBN 978–0–9569024–5–0. With an essay and an interview of Joan Fontcuberta by E. Waeckerlé.
- The cry of a dove announcing rain CD notes. Marjolaine Charbin and Eddie Prevost (Matchless Recordings, 2023).
- Widdershins, CD notes (Matchless Recordings, 2023).
- A direction out there, readwalking (with) Thoreau, E. Waeckerlé (MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, 2021). ISBN 978-1-910055-85-4.
- Reading (story of) O, E. Waeckerlé (Uniformbooks, 2015). ISBN 978 1 910010 07 5.
Research supervision
- Transdisciplinarity practices across image, music and text
- Performance Art
- Free improvisation (music)
- Post digital Publishing / photobook / artist books
Current UCA research students
- Emma Lambert (2020 – present)
Book as social space: the contemporary photobook at the intersection of independent publishing and social art practice. - Michael J. McEvoy (2020 – Present)
Composition and Performance Practice Authenticity, Liveness, Creativity & Technology. - Maureen Wolloshin (2021 – Present)
The female free-improvising oboist: a practice-based feminist investigation into the agency of gender and instrument in British free improvisation.
Completed UCA research students
- Giusy Pirrota (2018)
Moving image and the space around the frame: time-based installations and forms of experience. - Manuel Vason (2019)
The PhotoPerformer: The Performance of Photography as an Act of Precarious Interdependency. - Matt Johnston (2020)
PHOTO / BOOK / CLUB; Connections (made and missed, digital and other) between the photobook and its reader. - Ollie Gapper (2022)
Book-space; exploring the potentialities for intimate communication within the photobook.
- Noriko Suzuki-Bosco ( 2019, University of Southampton)
- Sophie Stone (2021, Canterbury Christ Church University)