Contextualizing the process behind the making of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective as a dramaturgy of “curating in the continuous present” exhibition curator Emelie Chhangur discusses the innovations and stagings of this project as both a performative exhibition and an exhibition that performed the work of the artist. The paper includes curatorial texts an exhibition walkthrough and a personal account of the almost 4 year journey what the writer also refers as a durational 1:1 performance with the artist Jess Dobkin.

In contributing to the audio descriptions for Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective I approached each artwork with a deep sense of intimacy and creative exploration. Rather than adhering strictly to visual accuracy I chose to interpret and describe the pieces through the impressions they left on me—emphasizing mood emotion and the sensory experience of encountering the works. Inspired by creative writing and poetic practices this experimental approach allowed me to provide affect-based intuitive narrations that invite listeners to engage with the artwork on a deeper more personal level.

This essay examines a drawing by performance artist Jess Dobkin. Created for her 2021 Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University the drawing depicts a female-body-shaped Venn Diagram that contains all the names of the people artists places and groups that Jess has collaborated with in her art practice since 1991. The drawing has a notable crossover of two circles that form a bright pink pointy-ended oval. This is the vaginal portal of the “Venn woman” at the center of the drawing. Through an analysis of this drawing this essay considers the nature of collaboration and community-building in both art-making practices and in life.

The entrance lobby of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective is riddled with clues to the magical and performative world on the other side. This essay discusses these clues in an attempt to exploring the hospitality and generosity of the artist's practice.

Ah the pink reminds me of my first favourite colour. Soft and bright as I got excited to meet Jess an extraterrestrial from the space. Shiny suit as the whimsical energy radiated from the alien. We made a deal we are going to have a fun party in the archive room with floating objects.

This chapter reflects on the author's relationship to Jess Dobkin and Jess Dobkin's work

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.

Music In Eight Parts is a text piece that accompanies and outlines the sound installation by Zealley for Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective. Using documentary sounds from Dobkin's performance works and musics that echo Dobkin's past and present-future.