Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective
Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective (Book)
Constellating performance archives
How do archives perform? What might it mean for art institutions to take seriously the embodied and communal nature of performance art in their practices of archiving and museological display? Renowned international performance theorists and artists explore and reflect on Dobkin’s celebrated 25+ year practice. 200 col. illus
Edition
Taking as its starting point the first-ever retrospective exhibition (2021) of Canadian performance artist Jess Dobkin, the book reflects on the internationally acclaimed artist’s playful and provocative practice as performer, activist, curator, and community leader. At the same time, it grapples with a question that is vital for art and performance studies: How do archives perform?
More than a discrete showing of a single artist’s work, the exhibition, including its new staging in book form, is a large-scale research experiment in performance curation, investigating what it might mean for art institutions to take seriously the embodied and communal nature of performance art in their practices of archiving and museological display.
In Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective, a cast of renowned international performance theorists and artists dive into this exploration alongside Dobkin, curator Emelie Chhangur, and performance theorist and dramaturg Laura Levin. These contributions appear alongside a riot of full colour photographs, providing access to Dobkin’s celebrated artistic productions from the last 25 years.
Laura Levin is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance at York University, Canada, Director of the Hemispheric Encounters Network, and Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology. She has authored and edited numerous publications on political performance, including the award-winning books Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In and Performance Studies in Canada (with Marlis Schweitzer), and co-created artistic works connecting activist performance, digital media, and critical spatial practice.
Emelie Chhangur, In and of an Archive
Laura Levin, Performance and the Making of Liberatory Archives
Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan, Wetrospective Audio Descriptions
The Lobby
A room that performs as ‘Lobby’ and re-frames the frame of the gallery.
Moynan King, Inside the Exhibition
Hurmat Ain, Lobby of Hospitality
Moe Angelos, A Woman Iis Her Own Ocean
Maria Hupfield, Post Performance / Conversation Action
Benjamin Gillespie and Jess Dobkin, Power to the Pause: A Pandemic Conversation
Jess Dobkin, Interlude: excerpt from The Magic Hour
Gallery Room One
A room where performance ephemera (props, costumes, puppets) perform for the gallery audience – and for each other – in latrine vitrines, rather than trying to capture time past.
Alex Tigchelaar, I’ve Got Your Hole
Dany Lyne, Congruence
Thalia Godbout, Porta-Jane Drawings
Roberta Mock, Jess Dobkin’s Vaginal Archive
Dayna McLeod, Queerly Touching
Tamyka Bullen, Waves
Jess Dobkin, Interludes: excerpts from The Magic Hour, Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar, and M*THERFUCK#R
Gallery Room Two
One Hundred documenters (re)perform Dobkin’s iconic work, How Many Performance Artists Does It Take to Change a Lightbulb (For Martha Wilson), creating a new artwork out of its traces.
Amy Fung, Evidence Toward a Hungry Room
Laine Halpern Zisman, Renovated Memories and the Stories They Tell
Andrew Zealley, Music in Eight Parts
Jess Dobkin, Interludes: excerpts from The Magic Hour and ‘Notes on Bendy Time’
Gallery Room Three
An archive reading room, where spectators are invited to sift through Jess’s ‘stuff’ performing in poetically labelled boxes and through an AR interface.
Ann Cvetkovich, The Healing Magic of the Archival Box
Jehan Roberson, On Touching the Intangible
Joyce LeeAnn, (re)Defining ‘Archivist’
Clayton Lee, 32 Things about the Wetrospective on Tour
Jess Dobkin, Interludes: excerpts from The Magic Hour and Everything I’ve Got
Jess Dobkin: Performance Chronology
Contributor Bios
