It’s official. 2/12/14. The first day of CAA is upon us.

Imagining Day One. (Sketch by me)

(Hopefully y’all aren’t crazy nervous…)

Some of you are presenting papers you’ve been working on for months (or longer).  Some of you are hoping to network. Some of you are celebrating a life’s work.  Some of you are first time attendees who have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. All incredibly humbling and exciting, right? (Plus we get to put on “art face”!!)

(Art Face)

About Me and this project:

This is my first CAA conference. I’m an art historian and an artist interested in performance art, new media, film theory, and interdisciplinary practices. I’m on the lookout for interdisciplinary panels mixed with artists/historians/critics/laymen, anything touching on the performative, and artists talking about their own work.

I’ll be documenting my experience of CAA on this blog and on twitter @vortexechoes. I also highly recommend you read all my fellow bloggers.  We hope to cover all we can and help where needed.

Going In:

As a first time attendee, preparing for the conference can be daunting. The schedule is just plain huge, and I wish I could be in more than one place at a time. But man, doesn’t that speak to the richness of this event? How lucky we are to have access to this multitude of ideas…

Most of us are asking: How do I make the most of this conference? How do I decide what sessions will be the most fruitful for my practice?  How can I network without seeming pushy?  Where can I find the most exciting ideas? What exhibitions should I go to?

The fear is: What if I miss some incredible paper given by some hands down sexy lecturer whose ideas would have fundamentally altered my art practice for the rest of my life? ((And I was in the bathroom… !?!?!))

The reality is: It’s simply impossible to have a comprehensive experience of this conference. All we have are the titles of papers, gut feelings, and hopefully THIS BLOG to go by.  Let’s throw ourselves in and see what comes across our path, yeah?

Still, it’s always good to HAVE A GAME PLAN.

Here’s where I’ll be today: 

8am Coffee.

At La Colombe, Wicker Park

1pm  Media Lounge Workshop (3rd Floor, Joliet Room)

12:30pm – 2pm  looking at the interdisciplinary at Visual Culture Caucus: Industrial Sublime (3rd Floor, Williford A) 

2pm Take a breather with the Media Lounge Video Screenings 

2:30pm-5pm  will be stacked: Articulating Abstraction (3rd Floor,Waldorf Room) & On Sampled Time: Artist’s Videos and Popular Culture (Lobby Level, Continental A) & Towards a Loser’s Art History (8th Floor, Lake Erie)

7:00pm Hopefully a big fat cocktail (it is also my birthday!) and Awards Presentation 2nd Floor, Grand Ballroom

Yes, Yes Y’all…Let’s Roll!

— Post Revision: 2/12/14, 2:02am