Ecstatic Resitance (scheme), 2009.

"Ecstatic Resistance is a project, a practice, a partial philosophy and a set of strategies", says Emily Roysdon. "It is about the limits of representation and legibility - the limits of the intelligible - and strategies that undermine hegemonic oppositions. It talks about pleasure in the domain of resistance, sexualising modern structures in order to centralise instability, and plasticity in life, living, and the self. It is about waiting, and the temporal nature of change, a philosophy which thinks about all that is unthinkable and unspeakable in the Eurocentric, phallocentric world order". For Manifesta 8, Roysdon presents the schematic structure of Ecstatic Resistance as a silkscreen print.

Emily Roysdon
1977, Maryland, USA. Lives and works in New York and Stockholm. Roysdon's work is presently motivated by three central queries. The dynamics between image to movement and document to experience. Investigations into an expanded field of choreography as both formal medium, political practice, social organizing and collectivity. And lastly, developing Ecstatic Resistance, a concept to speak about the impossible and a new imaginary in politics ¿ engaging a language of strategy, the unspeakable, pleasure, and plasticity, with movement at its core. Thematic connections are the primacy of movement, a conceptual investment in language, the dynamic of struggle and improvisation, and deconstruction of processes of history. Her working method is interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of performance, photographic installations, print making, text, video, curating and collaborating.
She is editor and co-founder of the queer feminist journal and artist collective, LTTR. She is a contributing member with the band MEN. Roysdon's work has been shown at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Bucharest Biennial, Participant, Inc. (NY); Generali Foundation (Vienna); New Museum (NY); and Power Plant (Toronto). Her videos have been screened widely, including Berlinale; and the Images Festival (Toronto). Her writings have been published in numerous books and magazines, including the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Zehar, C Magazine, and Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory. Upcoming solo shows at Konsthall C in Stockholm and a Matrix commission from the Berkeley Art Museum.