Maxwell Stephens
Essays & Catalogue Texts
Murmuring a Trace ... Tracing a Thought
In: Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tied): Emma Waltraud Howes, eds.: Emma Waltraud Howes
K. Verlag Press and Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
2014
… Curiously, what she wills to do comes face to face with what she can do. Dance is most beautifully animated on such a shifting foundation. Skill and technique are simply other means at Emma’s disposal. She uses the body as medium, as interpretive tool, as site of interlocution, saying something that is difficult to say. Where we let words go so we can take them up again. Even if we have to pin down a word here, and cut off a foot or leg there and send it away, flying across the mountains, or quivering undead in a video monitor. I learn something about myself in these extensions of a human capacity to sense ourselves anew, scattered about in existence. Just so. Inessentially so, when we choose to follow Emma’s example.