Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective: Constellating performance archives

From the Goldfarb Gallery website: 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 Goldfarb Gallery (formerly 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.

Editor
Laura Levin

Publishers
The Goldfarb Gallery (formerly AGYU)
Intellect Books, UK

Publication Date
2024

Binding
Softcover, colour illustrations

Size
10 x 14 inches
192 pages

ISBN
978-0-921972-85-3