Ankyloglossia (n. Tongue-tie)

Ankyloglossia (n. Tongue-tie) is a volume of parts, carefully composed through compiled notes, diagrams, and scores that act as an extension for a new installation work of the same title by Canadian artist Emma Waltraud Howes. The artist’s book’s layout and dramaturgy are inspired by three seminal performance works—Yvonne Rainer’s choreography The Mind is a Muscle (1968) and Samuel Beckett’s pieces Not I (1972) and Quad (1981). Exploring perspectives towards gesture and non-semantic language, Howes questions the ethics of choreography in search of a new means of expression. A variety of textual contributions produced by the artist herself and a series of invited collaborators—B, Patricia Reed, Gregor Runge, Lorenzo Sandoval, Anna-Sophie Springer, and Maxwell Stephens—reference, explore, and appropriate connections to and between these historic works. Brought together in this way as an ensemble, these artists and writers appear in the interludes, the intermission, and in scattered scenes, pronouncing their participation in what is an evolving theatre.

The book was published on the occasion of the premiere of Ankyloglossia (n. Tongue-tie) by Emma Waltraud Howes presented as a solo exhibition within the International Studio Programme at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin from 9 October to 2 November 2014. Howes was the 2013/14 grantee of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec. With the kind support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec.

The New York Type Directors Club awarded this book a prize as Communication Design Winner 2015.