The Healing Magic of the Archival Box

This essay discusses the archival boxes in Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective as a version of what Cvetkovich calls “an archive of feelings” and explores the magic powers of the material artifact and its storage systems. The contribution also includes a transcription of a conversation between Cvetkovich and Dobkin about the relation between the magic boxes and healing from trauma.

Keywords: affect ; archive ; archive of feelings ; emotion ; feeling ; magic ; materiality ; performance ; talisman ; trauma