Emmanuelle Waeckerlé
A DIRECTION OUT THERE. READWALKING (WITH) THOREAU, 2021
A DIRECTION OUT THERE. READWALKING (WITH) THOREAU, 2021
I speak the (non-walking) words one at a time as I encounter them, one leading me to the next as it completes it. The last may sometimes leave a trail.
Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental lecture/essay, after pruning, becomes conceptual poetry with an accompanying score for reading, walking, speaking, singing, playing. A reading path leads through Thoreau’s words, keeping a trace of the original text as the visible root of Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s rewilding; this mise en abyme reveals endless potential paths. Readwalking describes a simultaneous act of reading and walking: reading as walking, of walking as reading, of reading a text about walking, step by step, putting one foot in front of the other, each word calling the next, following one’s instinct or senses, as one is going along a reading path, as Thoreau writes, always going west, sauntering, readwalking as if one’s life depended on it…
‘Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s score lifts the materiality of the text out of its ordinary fusion with the flows of meaning and rumination. Read-walking Thoreau, even in one’s own mind, has the salutary effect of an acupuncture of the spacetime of reading. Constellations of ideas virtually glow around Thoreau’s grey-scaled text, beautifully illuminated from different angles by Vicky Smith and Michael Hampton’s essays.’ —> Cécile Malaspina
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and composer. Her practice emerges between text and performance, between the page and the body.
Her scores, publications, installations, performances, and workshops propose alternative ways of engaging with interior or exterior landscapes and each other. Her music and scores are distributed by Edition Wandelweiser. Recent publications include Reading (story of) O (uniformbooks, 2015) and a double CD, a direction out there (Edition Wandelweiser, 2021). Her works are held in collections including the V&A, London, the Poetry Library at Southbank Centre, London, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Centre des livres d’artistes (cdla), Saint-Yrieix-La-Perche.
There is a serious and considered review of this book here, and we could not be more pleased.
On 2 December 2025 Emmanuelle Waeckerlé will read /perform from A direction out there, readwalking (with) Thoreau at the Architectural Association in London, as part of the public programme of their Ursula K Le Guin exhibition.
We have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. ~ Ursula K Le Guin
This evening of readings takes its cue from Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction – which reimagines narrative not as a linear arc of conquest but a container to gather and ‘hold things that bear meanings and enable relationships’.
The gathering functions as a kind of ‘carrier bag’ – a vessel for holding voices, fragments, and temporalities. The event unfolds through a series of short readings that resist closure and invite collective engagement. Voice becomes continuous with what it reads, while also altering it – construing a space of communication, resonance, and shared knowledge. Through conversational exchange and the labour of reading, the event explores acts of being with others through words.
If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely, please email publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk
Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental lecture/essay, after pruning, becomes conceptual poetry with an accompanying score for reading, walking, speaking, singing, playing. A reading path leads through Thoreau’s words, keeping a trace of the original text as the visible root of Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s rewilding; this mise en abyme reveals endless potential paths. Readwalking describes a simultaneous act of reading and walking: reading as walking, of walking as reading, of reading a text about walking, step by step, putting one foot in front of the other, each word calling the next, following one’s instinct or senses, as one is going along a reading path, as Thoreau writes, always going west, sauntering, readwalking as if one’s life depended on it…
‘Emmanuelle Waeckerlé’s score lifts the materiality of the text out of its ordinary fusion with the flows of meaning and rumination. Read-walking Thoreau, even in one’s own mind, has the salutary effect of an acupuncture of the spacetime of reading. Constellations of ideas virtually glow around Thoreau’s grey-scaled text, beautifully illuminated from different angles by Vicky Smith and Michael Hampton’s essays.’ —> Cécile Malaspina
Emmanuelle Waeckerlé is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and composer. Her practice emerges between text and performance, between the page and the body.
Her scores, publications, installations, performances, and workshops propose alternative ways of engaging with interior or exterior landscapes and each other. Her music and scores are distributed by Edition Wandelweiser. Recent publications include Reading (story of) O (uniformbooks, 2015) and a double CD, a direction out there (Edition Wandelweiser, 2021). Her works are held in collections including the V&A, London, the Poetry Library at Southbank Centre, London, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Centre des livres d’artistes (cdla), Saint-Yrieix-La-Perche.
There is a serious and considered review of this book here, and we could not be more pleased.
On 2 December 2025 Emmanuelle Waeckerlé will read /perform from A direction out there, readwalking (with) Thoreau at the Architectural Association in London, as part of the public programme of their Ursula K Le Guin exhibition.
We have not heard about the thing to put things in, the container for the thing contained. That is a new story. ~ Ursula K Le Guin
This evening of readings takes its cue from Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction – which reimagines narrative not as a linear arc of conquest but a container to gather and ‘hold things that bear meanings and enable relationships’.
The gathering functions as a kind of ‘carrier bag’ – a vessel for holding voices, fragments, and temporalities. The event unfolds through a series of short readings that resist closure and invite collective engagement. Voice becomes continuous with what it reads, while also altering it – construing a space of communication, resonance, and shared knowledge. Through conversational exchange and the labour of reading, the event explores acts of being with others through words.
If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely, please email publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk
92 pages
105 mm x 170 mm
60 mm French flaps (cover)
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-85-4
£10.00
Next Book ->
105 mm x 170 mm
60 mm French flaps (cover)
Format: Paperback
ISBN 978-1-910055-85-4
£10.00
Next Book ->