Renovated Memories and the Stories they Tell

In ‘How Many Performance Artists Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb (for Martha Wilson),’ Jess Dobkin refuses the linearity prescribed by straight heteronormative time and instead leans into a collectively constructed archive of a past and future in the making, inviting us as an audience, as participants, as time keepers to collaborate in a story that is multidirectional and multiple. As the durational performance unfolds, time stands still, never stops, changes pace, and always comes back to itself, never quite ending as it takes and changes shape through its archive. This chapter considers how the queer temporal logic of How Many Performance Artists actively disrupts the compartmentalizing of past, present, and future, layering subjective truths upon themselves, always in a state of shuffle.

Keywords: collaborative performance ; memory ; memory studies ; participatory performance ; performance documentation ; queer archive ; queer history ; queer performance ; queer performance art ; queer temporality ; temporal disruption