Emma Hoette
Working at the intersection of design and performance Hoette researches and mobilizes everyday acts and materials, giving them agency by transforming them into multimedia choreographic projects. Her work has been performed and exhibited in a range of contexts spanning performing arts venues, festivals and galleries across the US, Europe and Svalbard. From 2016-2017 she was the coordinator of Artica Svalbard, an Artist - in - Residence program based in Longyearbyen. She has been Artist in Residence herself at Arctic Action in Svalbard and Fleetmoves in USA and in 2017 a participant of the Arctic Circle residency. She has collaborated with Ben Cain, UK and Rotative Studio, Zurich/Rotterdam on performative interventions for their respective exhibits. She holds a BFA in Integrated Design from Parsons, The New School for Design, NYC and an MFA in Creative Practice from Laban Conservatoire of Dance and Music, London. As visiting faculty at Amsterdam Architecture Academy, Rietveld Academy and Goldsmiths University Hoette has written and delivered workshops and curriculum exploring the potential of embodied research to expand design practices.
Unravelling #20
These performances use a knitted garment and my body's movement as an analogy for the production and consumption of fossil fuels. Just as the earths process takes a long time to produce fossil fuel a knitted garment takes a long time to knit. Yet if you get the right end of the knitting it will unravel in seconds, just as humanity is consuming the non-renewable fossil fuels at a rapid rate.
As a ritual over 3 years I performed some 20 site specific ‘unravellings’. Sometimes these had an audience of one or two people, some witnessed by unmanned cameras. The landscape was however always watching. The metaphor and action of unravelling on-site provides a way for the relationship between production and consumption to be physically and visually explored. It also offers a new way to understand the effects of the relentless act of consumption, through the expertise of movement, rather than only through the expertise of science – an area I and many others are unversed in.
The hand, made of 26 bones, begins with the full dexterity and articulation that its structure is built for. Through circular movements, the hand monotonously unravels the knitting, binding itself into dysfunction and paralysis. Simultaneously the act of that hand consuming slowly exposes the neck of its own body, a most vulnerable part of the human anatomy, to the extreme elements.
Artist Statement:
I am an artist that uses my body, choreography, design, images and film to tell stories and explore the issues of our time in a way that will foster and ignite conversations. My work, often results in choreographies and performances and is the way I process my presence in society, my interactions with/experiences of others and observations of my environment. I strive for these observations, translations and experiments to be relevant and inspiring within broader dialogue around social interactions and transactions.
