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C Mag

Workshop

Conjuring the Archive, Jess Dobkin

4:30-7:30pm

Event Details

Date

22 Apr 2022

Location

72 Perth Ave, Toronto

In this series of artist-led workshops, participants develop approaches to alternative archival practices that are rooted in community rather than established by an institution. Informed by the tenets of C Magazine’s Experiments in Criticism program, which was formed in consultation with experts in critical art pedagogy in 2019, these workshops pose questions for contemplation, discussion, and activation, such as: How can we develop embodied historiographic practices using creative-critical methods? How can we immediately begin to write a future that doesn’t perpetuate the same erasures we’ve witnessed to date? How do we record select details of our present in ways that will ensure they retain their vivacity over time, and by extension, how do we decide what to commit to memory?

This program is co-created and co-presented with the Toronto Biennial of Art.

Conjuring the Archive
Jess Dobkin
Friday, April 22
4:30-7:30pm
72 Perth Ave, Toronto

Register here.

In this participatory performance art workshop, we will delve into experiences, ideas, and questions about the lifespan and spirit life of archival materials. Objects perform in past, present, and future, inhabiting all dimensions and directions, with new resonance and meaning available in every possible context. Participants will bring three items that they consider to be part of their personal or community archive and through sensory, embodied, and energetic encounters, we will collaboratively explore connections and intersections of live performance, documentation, and archival practice. Prompts and discussions will have us consider: How can archival materials be used in the creation of new work? How might we understand performance documentation as an artistic practice and as a potential tool with which to write archives differently?

All artists, archivists, activists, finders, keepers, scholars, collectors, witches, and mystics are welcome.

Maximum 13 participants.

Please contact info@cmagazine.com with any accessibility requests.

BIO
Jess Dobkin has been a working artist, curator, community activist, mentor, and teacher for more than 25 years, having created and produced intimate solo theatre performances, large-scale public happenings, socially engaged interventions, performance art workshops, and talks. Her practice extends across black boxes and white cubes, art fairs and subway stations, international festivals and single bathroom stalls. 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 film and video works are distributed by Vtape and traces of her performance work are held in performance art archives internationally. jessdobkin.com

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