Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective: Book Launch & Celebration

Events Launch

Date

Monday 17 Mar 2025

Venue

The Garrett Centre

Address

117A Mansford Street, E2 6LX

Timings

Doors open: 6.30pm

Event: 7-9pm

Price

Pay What You Can (£0/£4/£8)

Book

Please join us on Monday 17 March at 7pm for the UK launch of Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective: Constellating performance archives, published in 2024 by Intellect and Art Gallery of York University.

The event will feature performance art icon Jess Dobkin and editor Laura Levin, with toasts and performances by Wetrospective collaborators, co-conspirators and queer luminaries. DJhaveakiki will provide beats for the mix and mingle.

A donations bar and artist-made merchandise will be available throughout the evening. You can purchase Wetrospective at the launch or order it online from LADA’s shop Unbound.

This event is supported by Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices.

About Wetrospective

Taking as its starting point the first-ever retrospective exhibition of Jess Dobkin in 2021, Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective 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 artists’ 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. 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.

Jess Dobkin

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 Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, the Franklin Furnace, the ASTREA Foundation, The Theatre Centre, and other institutional and community partners. Her film and video works are distributed by VTape and traces of her performance work are held in performance art archives internationally.

Laura Levin

Laura Levin is York Research Chair in Art, Technology, and Global Activism; Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance; and Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts & Technology at York University (Toronto). Levin is Director of the Hemispheric Encounters Network, a SSHRC Partnership that explores how live and digital performance can connect artists, activists, and scholars across the Americas addressing shared human rights and environmental justice challenges. She is author/editor of five books, including the award-winning Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In and Performance Studies in Canada (with Marlis Schweitzer), and has co-created several research-creation projects exploring intersections of political performance, space, and immersive media. Mostly recently she has served as dramaturg on Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective and SpiderWebShow’s VR production, You Should Have Stayed Home.

Access Information

Event information: This is a mix and mingle event, various seating options will be available including fold out chairs, office chairs, a sofa and a bench. All are welcome to join in a relaxed space and are free to come and go as they please. The lighting will be fixed with no sudden changes and microphone amplification will be used. There are disposable masks available.

Content notes: The event includes references of sexual nature. Please email Willy if you would like more information on what to expect.

LADA space: LADA and The Garrett Centre are wheelchair accessible by lift and provide gender inclusive bathrooms. You can find more information and see photos of the space here. Should you have any particular access requirements, please email [email protected] and we will be happy to offer further support.