Hello, and welcome to Sid Branca’s Introductory Post. It pairs well with slightly burned black coffee and John Cage’s Daughters of the Lonesome Isle. Or at least that’s what I’m doing.

I thought I’d begin with a brief overview of who I am, my varied involvement in CAA, and what you can expect to see from me on this blog over the course of this week.

I’m a performance artist, mostly, although I also do a substantial amount of writing, and a lot of artistic work that is performative but not necessarily performance (video, sound, installation, digital media). You can read more about me and my work on my profile for this blog, or by visiting my website. I’m a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Arts & Media MFA program at Columbia College Chicago. I’m a member of the College Art Association and the New Media Caucus. I’m also on the CCC CAA Events Committee and the New Media Caucus Events & Exhibitions Committee.

Some of my background is in academia (I went to nerd college) and engaging with critical discourse is definitely a part of my artistic practice, so I am super stoked on CAA. I attended last year’s conference in New York,

A fair amount of my posting on here will be related to the New Media Caucus events taking place in and around the conference:

Wednesday, 9:30am-12:00pm  APPROACHING SYSTEMS, an NMC-sponsored panel co-chaired by Jon Cates and Shane Mecklenburger, with panelists Eddo Stern, Elisabeth Tina Rivers, Melissa Ragain, and Philip Galanter. See the website and facebook event for more. I’ll also be interviewing Cates & Mecklenburger earlier in the week, so keep an eye out for that post on Tuesday.

Thursday, 2:30 PM—5:00 PM: ART² Make Roundtable (with roundtable chairs Rachel Clarke and Tom Burtonwood) and Opening Reception, Center for Book and Paper Arts Gallery 1104 S Wabash. See this and this and this for more.  Open to the public.

Thursday, 8:00pm-11:00pm: New Media Caucus Showcase, Conaway Center, 1104 S Wabash. Fifteen new media artists giving six-minute presentations on their work. I’m co-coordinating this event and giving a presentation, so I’m extra excited about this one. See here. Open to the public.

Friday, 12:30 PM—2:00 PM: Exaptation and the Digital Now, an NMC-sponsored panel chaired by Alex Myers and Daniel Rourke, with Zara Dinnen and Rob Gallagher. See here.

Friday, 2:30pm – 4:30pm, New Media Lightning Talks, Bar Louie, 47 W. Polk St. A series of discussions on new media topics. See here. Open to the public (although it may be 21+, as it is in a bar).

Friday, 5:30pm – 7:00pm: NMC10 Video Programme, the Chicago Cultural Center. A juried video program celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the New Media Caucus. See here. Open to the public.

There are also a couple of non-NMC panels at CAA I will definitely be attending (see the Full CAA Schedule for more info):

Wednesday, 2:30pm-5:00pm: On Sampled Time: Artists’ Videos and Popular Culture, with Margot M. K. Bouman (Chair), Sarah Smith, Isabelle L. Wallace, Solveig Nelson, and Godfre Leung.

Saturday, 12:30pm – 2:00pm: They Do Things that They Don’t Do on Broadway: Chicago and the Performed as Visual. Chaired by Sean Elwood of the Creative Capital Foundation, with panelists Nick E. Cave, Theaster Gates, William Pope.L, and Cauleen Smith.

I’m also hoping to attend, but may have to miss out on, the Queer Caucus for Art’s Strange Bedfellows, Thursday 12:30 – 2:00, chaired by Amy Cancelmo with panelists Sean Fader, Tara Mateik, Tina Takemoto, and Julie Sutherland.

I’m still figuring out what I’ll be able to attend of the morning panels on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so there will probably be a post about what I think looks the most exciting for each morning.

Fun stuff: I’ll also be doing a couple of fun and hopefully helpful posts about other things I’d recommend experiencing while in Chicago this week, like some of my favorite art galleries and dive bars, as well as some unconference/anti-conference/caalternate events going on around town. I’ve been living in Chicago since 2005 and know the city fairly well, so if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see me post about, please let me know in the comments!