The AGYU announces the release of Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective: Constellating performance archives

Edited by Laura Levin, co-published with Intellect Books
26 x35 cm, 192 pages, softcover, October 18, 2024
ISBN 978-0-921972-85-3
$50

Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective: Constellating performance archives celebrates the first-ever retrospective exhibition of performance art icon Jess Dobkin. This book reflects on the internationally acclaimed artist’s playful and provocative practice as performer, curator, and community activist and asks: How do archives perform? With a riot of full-colour photographs, Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective provides unparalleled access to Dobkin’s artistic process and production from the last thirty years.

Laying out Dobkin’s archive for all gallery visitors to browse through, this maximal extravaganza first took over the AGYU in 2021 in an exhibition curated by Emelie Chhangur. Following in the footsteps of the exhibition, the Wetrospective book, edited by performance scholar and dramaturg Laura Levin, collects the threads of the show and presents Dobkin’s work as it should be: extravagantly, with a cast of theorists and critics including Ann Cvetkovich, Amy Fung, Jehan Roberson, and Roberta Mock. A gaggle of past performance artist collaborators make guest appearances, as well as copious photographs, chronologies, maps, and other archival documents.

This book not only documents the career of Dobkin to now, but it also documents how to document performance practice. With gusto. Designing such a thing could only be accomplished by someone intimately familiar with Dobkin’s practice, the inimitable Lisa Kiss.

AGYU co-published this comprehensive catalogue with Intellect Books, UK, distributed in North America by University of Chicago Press. Copies of the book available through our website, from Intellect Books and the University of Chicago Press, and Art Metropole.

Wetrospective book launch events will take the form of readings, artist’s talks, interviews, queer cabarets, and dance parties. Toronto book launch: November 9, 2024, at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. New York book launch: December 9, 2024, at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU with the Franklin Furnace. Dates for Montreal, Vancouver, Chicago, and London to be announced soon.

For more information, please contact Michael Maranda, assistant curator, publications, at mmarand@yorku.ca.

Jess Dobkin has been a working artist, curator, community activist, teacher, and mentor for more than 30 years. Her practice extends across theatres and galleries, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals and museums, universities and public archives. She has operated an artist-run newsstand in a vacant subway station kiosk, a soup kitchen for artists, a breast milk tasting bar, and a performance festival hub for kids. Her projects have been supported by the numerous arts councils, the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, the ASTREA Foundation, The Theatre Centre, and other partners. She was a Fellow at the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto and was Artist-in-Residence at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics at New York University. Her film and video works are distributed by Vtape and traces of her performance work are held in performance art archives internationally.

Laura Levin is an associate professor of Theatre and Performance at York University, York Research Chair in Art, Technology, and Global Activism, and director of the Sensorium. Levin is the author of the award-winning Performing Ground. She is the former editor-in-chief of Canadian Theatre Review and editor of four books. Laura has worked as a director, dramaturg, curator, and performer on several artistic research projects at the intersection of political performance, site-specificity, archives, and digital media. Laura is the director of the Hemispheric Encounters Network.

Emelie Chhangur is an influential voice for experimental curatorial practice in Canada. An artist, writer, and curator, she is celebrated for her process-based, participatory curatorial practice, the commissioning of complex works across all media. Chhangur is currently director/curator of Agnes Etherington Art Centre, where she fights for a community-engaged architectural design process to reimagine new museum architectures that ensure cultural spaces of Canada’s future no longer look like those of Canada’s colonial past.

Lisa Kiss opened her design studio after working at Eye Weekly for six years. While at Eye, she ran a freelance business working with artists and cultural organizations. In 2000, she left to start Lisa Kiss Design. Today her work focuses on collaborating with artists, museums, and galleries and ranges from identity projects to book design to exhibition graphics.

Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) is a socially minded not-for-profit contemporary art gallery that is a space for the creation and appreciation of art and culture. It is a supported Unit of York University within the President’s Division. We are externally funded as a public art gallery through the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, local and international foundations, embassies, and our membership who support our programs.

The Art Gallery of York University acknowledges our presence on the ancestral territory of the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Huron-Wendat. We offer this land acknowledgement as an expression of gratitude and appreciation to those on whose territory we reside. It is a small way of honouring the Indigenous people who have for generations cared for this land and its waterways. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the history of what has brought us to reside here and understand our place within this history.

We are cognizant that we cannot separate the histories of York University from the history of settler colonialism and slavery in Canada, and in this regard, we also recognize thousands of African descendants have been enslaved, displaced, and judicialized on this same territory. Today, in Toronto, non-Indigenous people exist as settlers and as displaced peoples on traditional Indigenous lands which are currently held under treaty by the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Knowing that colonial legacies continue through various modes of systemic oppression that affect the everyday lives of far too many people, we encourage our communities to take the time to learn about the history and to support the struggles and demands of Indigenous peoples as well as other communities who experience oppression and share the territories we occupy.

Through AGYU’s programming, we strive to build reciprocal relationships with Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities on and off campus and continually work to improve our anti-racist and anti-hate, equity, and ecological practices. We welcome your suggestions on how we may continue to grow in this regard.

Art Gallery of York University
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Toronto ON M3J 1P3
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