Emmanuelle Waeckerlé

Research statement

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a (French) London-based artist, composer and curator experimenting with the materiality and musicality of language through poetic scores (that also exist as artist publications) and occasions for their activation (installations, performances, workshops). Her practice has evolved from the single discipline of Fine Art Photography into multiple, interconnected work zones: conceptual writing, performance, new musical composition and artist-publishing.

Through her continuing commitment to both education and practice based research Emmanuelle tries to foster new enquiry across image, music and text, developing along the way collaborative projects both locally and internationally, in academic and non academic contexts. She  is inspired by Rosi Braidotti’s concept of the 21^st 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)”.

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 founders of the Composer Meet Composer mentoring project (Austria). 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.

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.

Waeckerlé is director of bookRoom experimental post-digital publishing platform at UCA since 2009, engaged with editorial, curatorial and critical research through a number of interrelated activities; conferences, study days, publishing, book fairs, research degrees, a collection, an archive. Through publications, symposiums and public events, bookRoom has tracked the impact of digital technology on printed material and their use, the parallel histories and practices of the artist book and the photobook and post digital interaction. The bookRoom website acts as an archive of the project.

Research supervision

Current UCA research students:

• Emma Lambert
• Michael J McEvoy
• Maureen Wolloshin

Completed UCA research students:

• Giusy Pirrota (2018)
• Manuel Vason (2019)
• Matt Johnston (2020)
• Ollie Gapper (2022)