Emmanuelle Waeckerle

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is an experimental musician, multidisciplinary artist and composer based in London. Her text scores, publications and performances, explore the materiality and musicality of language while proposing playful encounters with our "interior or exterior landscape and each other."

Born in Morocco to French parents, Waeckerlé later moved to London. She studied photography at Sir John Cass (now Metropolitan University), and completed an MA in fine art at the Slade School of Art with Stuart Brisley and Liz Rhodes in 1996.

Her recordings include Ode (owed) to O released by edition wandelweiser records. The recording is one iteration of her critically acclaimed novel reading (Story of) O (published in 2015 by uniform books) which engages with the erotic novel Story of O which fascinated a generation. Waeckerlé has also presented the work at conferences as a lecture performance. Her novel work Jungle Fever encourages listeners to explore their own environments as new sonic landscapes. While PRAELUDERE, prompted by the fact that in French a ballad is both a song and a walk, uses writing and walking are understood here as simultaneous acts of marking, mapping and reading (space). Slow March is an audio-visual work and series of performances of a text score for a conceptual road movie and was an Artforum “Critics Pick.” It was performed in Paris, London and Toronto (reviewed in Time out by Sally O’Reilly – 20th-27th March 2002) and was an Artforum “Critics Pick”.

The interactive installation of VINST, a unique vocal instrument, part human part virtual, and the accompanying performance a duet (virtually) have been show at a number of venues across Europe and America, including NYCMF AT Cuny centre (2009, p64/65), Centro de Historia in Zaragoza, Spain 2008, Theatre museum in London and DRHA conference in Dartington Hall in Septembre 2006, Lagerhaus Neufelden in Austria in May 2006, MINDPLAY conference at Metropolitan University in January 06, LSO St Luke’s festival in July 2005, EXPO 966 in Scarborough and INPORT International Video-Performance Art Festival in Tallin / Estonia in June 2005. The project was funded by the prestigious 1 to 1 bursary ( 2000, LADA, arts council), and programmed in Max MSP and Jitter by Sebastian Lexer. It appeared in Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts Volume 9, 2004 and was the subject of a case study on in mappings between scientific invention and artistic inspiration.

Waeckerlé's visual and text scores and artists publications are in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, V & A, Tate Britain, Chelsea School of Art, University of Dundee Museum Services and the Saison Poetry Library in London. From 2007–2014 she was part of a small team that ran the Centre des Livres d’Artistes at Saint Yrieix la Perche in France, one of the 3 largest collection of artist books in France.

Waeckerlé is a keen improviser and long-standing attendee of Eddie Prévost’s (of AMM and Scratch Orchestra fame) weekly London workshop and MOWO (MOPOMOSO workshop group), she is founder member of  Bouche Bée (an improvising trio), Petri Huurinainen, John Eyles, and has collaborated with a•pe•ri•od•ic ensemble, and APTL ensemble. Waeckerle has taken part in a few recent Scratch orchestra’s concerts and performances as well as performing of Cornelius Cardew works; The complete great learning (union chapel  2015…) and Nature Study Notes at Café Oto (2015) This was followed by a post event Scratch Orchestra activation: Nature Study Notes group at MAYDAY rooms and published in Stefan Szczelkun Improvisation Rites: From John Cage's 'song Books' to the Scratch Orchestra's 'nature Study Notes'. Collective Practices 2011 - 2017.

Waeckerlé's publications are in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, V & A, Tate Britain, Chelsea School of Art, University of Dundee Museum Services and the Saison Poetry Library in London. She has also published on Grand Papier, which featured her work Ou?. Waeckerlé's work was reviewed in The PhotoBook Review #003, Fall 2012. From 2007–2014 she ran the Centre des Livres d’Artistes at Saint Yrieix la Perche in France as part of a small collective. She is the director of bookRoom research and publishing platform for which she has edited a few artist books as well as collections of critical texts tracking the impact of the digital revolution on publishing practices, such as The Book is Alive. Her research interest lies in socially engaged practices, publishing as a critical and collaborative venture, postdigital interaction and the human potential of platform technologies.

In addition to her work as a performer and composer, Waeckerlé is an active curator of the house concert series cosynook which has featured prominent experimental musicians Antoine Beuger, Marie-Cécile Reber, Antonio Acunzo, Marianne Schuppe, Stefan Thut, Marcus Kaiser, Nomi Epstein, and Bin Li. She is the co-curator of here.here streamed concert series in London and Farnham. A new concert series of contemporary experimental music curated in collaboration with Harrey Whalley (Music Composition and Technology at UCA Farnham), focusing on a multidisciplinary approach to experimental music and their common research and interest in extended, textual, visual, gestural and object scores. Four concerts per year are organized around a guest composer, taking place in Farnham and in London at Iklectik, performed by musicians and performers drawn from the London experimental music scene as well as students, researchers and members of the Audio Research Cluster at UCA Farnham. For the first year, the series invited Gildas Quartet (31st October 2019, UK), Marcus Kaiser (1st/2nd May 2019, Germany), Stefan Thut (10th 11th April 2019, Switzerland), Jessica Aslan and Emma Lloyd (13th March 2019, UK), Greg Caffery (Ireland), and Marie Cecile Reber (CH).

As an educator, Waeckerléis a Reader in photography and relational practices at University for the Creative Arts in Farnham (UK). She has also recently become a mentor at the heim.art / Wandelweiser Composers Meet Composers sessions including Antoine Beuger, Joachim Eckl, Marianne Schuppe, and Jürg Frey.

• Bouche Bée, Mopomoso concert series, The Vortex, London, 17 June 2018
• Training the senses: walking, workshop performance, Marres, house for contemporary culture, Maastricht, Holland, 13 June 2018.
• Ode (owed) to O, performed by E. Waeckerle and a•pe•ri•od•ic ensemble, Frequency series, Constellation, Chicago, 22 April 2018
• Antoine Beuger & Emmanuelle Waeckerlé – "Speak // If You Can”: Text, scores, performance, 2 concerts at café Oto, performed by Antoine Beuger, John Eyles, Sarah Hughes, Petri Huurinainen, Charlotte Keefe, Will Montgomery, Artur Vidal and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, London, 22/23 February 2018
• (Story of) / O(nly) / O(hh) daily performances for Klangraum 2017, Kunstraum, Düsseldorf, 18/23 July 2017
• Clay woman for Armel Beaufils, le Regard des femmes, exhibition and catalogue curated by Sharon Kivland, FRAC de Bretagne, Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, France, 1 July 2017 to 1 September 2017
• Jungle Fever in Athens, Gestures of  Resistance exhibition curated by Jean Wainwright, Romantso gallery, Athens, 20/30 April 2017
• Lullaby for Pauline, homage concert to Pauline Oliveros, with Vocal constructivists, 15 March 2017, Café Oto, London
• I Confess, a performance/video work addressing depression, First International Naked Poetry Festival, August 1998, ICA.

• Becoming-one; A Duologue in Practice (Photography and Culture: Vol. 11, No. 2) by Waeckerlé and Manuel Vason
• Ode (owed) to O (edition wandelweiser records, 2017)
• Reading (story of) O (uniformbooks, 2015)
• Rise with your class not from it (bookRoom press, 2016)
• Code X - paper, pixel, ink and screen (bookRoom press, 2015)
• The Book is A Live (RGAP, 2013)