A transition implies redistribution materialised as temporal form. It is available to choreographic, interpersonal, sonic, societal and governmental resonances; all of which Roysdon’s multifaceted practice reaches out to touch. Roysdon deploys the novel term ‘discomposition’ in order to access a zone in which to work, to create, and above all in which to collaborate. For her, it is an action that is invested not in destruction (decomposition), but in taking full account, expanding awareness, enabling the construction of smooth space and time to become apparent at its joints. This coupled focus, ‘discomposition’ and ‘transition’, continues Roysdon’s ongoing work centred on ‘movement’, unraveling and reworking its formal/compositional, social and political terms.

Emily Roysdon is one of four artists commissioned by If I Can’t Dance to produce a new work as part of Edition V: Appropriation and Dedication (2013-2014). The new work is commissioned by If I Can’t Dance with commissioning partners STUK/Museum M (Playground) Leuven, the TBA festival of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and with the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The work is also supported by Corpus, European Network For Performance Art, funded through the European Union.  

Biography

Emily Roysdon (1977) is a New York and Stockholm based artist and writer. Her working 
method is interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of performance, photographic 
installations, print making, text, video, curating and collaborating. Roysdon developed 
the concept 'ecstatic resistance' to talk about the impossible and imaginary in politics. The 
concept debuted with simultaneous shows at Grand Arts in Kansas City, and X Initiative in 
New York. She is editor and co-founder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective, 
LTTR. Her many collaborations include costume design for choreographers Levi Gonzalez, 
Vannesa Anspaugh and Faye Driscoll, as well as lyric writing for The Knife, and Brooklyn based 
JD Samson & MEN.