Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective

“Driven by an interest in how one might performatively engage the energetic liveness of archives from polysemous perspectives Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective takes up and takes apart the linear, patriarchal, and authoritative conventions of archive-making impulses. Channeling them instead toward more rhizomatic readings and feminist relationalities, she upcycles her own archive of past performances in ways that constitute her concept of “bendy-time.” The “archive” performs in this exhibition at the same time as it makes sense of (as in making sensate and sensual) an artist’s 25-plus-years of performance art work—including all its material and immaterial remains, reminders, and affective labour. This exhibition demands of archives what we expect from performance: the live encounter of experience in a ritual of transformation. Taking past performances as cues and as clues, this exhibition is a polytemporal, feminist, and queer experience of an archive of possible futurities, open to forever accommodating the always-shifting communities of belonging that Dobkin’s performance practice entails and magically conjures.” –Emelie Chhangur, Curator 

In September 2021, Curator of Hemispheric Encounters’ Performing Archives Stream Jess Dobkin presented her Wetrospective, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of York University, which reflected on 25 years of her own work as an artist, curator, and community activist, while exploring the question “How do archives perform?” The show featured staged ephemera from past performances in animated “litrine vitrines” (portable toilets) and a custom-designed augmented reality app that provided layered interactions with objects of performances past. The exhibition included a constellation of virtual and in-real-life talks, tours, and engagements. Some highlights include “Archival Alchemy®” with artist and interdisciplinary archivist Joyce LeeAnn in collaboration with Hemi Encounters partner FADO Performance Art Centre (watch the recorded livestream of “Archival Alchemy” here); “All the Feels” with scholar and cultural critic Ann Cvetkovich in conversation with Jess Dobkin; “Portals, Potions, and Archives,” a presentation by celebrated queer artist, writer, poet, and scholar Jehan Roberson; an ASL tour of the Wetrospective with artist, poet, and performer Tamyka Bullen (watch the recording of the tour here); and a Live Encounter Performative Gallery Tour with performance scholar and Hemi Encounters Director, Laura Levin, and more! Find the full program and links to video recordings at www.agyu.art/project/wetrospective.