Sid Branca
Assistant Professor, Adjunct
Contact
Bio
Education: BA, Theatre and Performance Studies, 2009, University of Chicago; MFA, Interdisciplinary Arts & Media, 2015, Columbia College Chicago. Exhibitions/Performances: The Wrong Biennale; Iceberg Projects; Chopin Theatre; Ordinary Peepholes; Wretched Nobles film series; Alphawood Gallery; C33 Gallery; Salonathon; L.A. Art Book Fair; South LA Contemporary; the Neo-Futurarium; GIFbites; Templehead Gallery; the Inconvenience; Pritzker Pavilion; Logan Center for the Arts; The Plagiarists; Chicago Fringe Festival; Smart Museum of Art. Publications: American Vampire podcast; Bad at Sports; Video Video Zine; VAM Magazine; The Midwesterner; the College Art Association Conference blog. Awards/Residencies: Arteles Creative Center Residency; Finlandia Foundation Grant; Diversity Infusion Grant; Swarm Artist Residency; Chicago Performance Lab Residency; Rosenblum Award. Professional Affiliations: New Media Caucus; First Floor Theater.
Personal Statement
I am a multi-disciplinary artist, performer, and writer: I make videos, live performances (often with video or sound elements), books & texts & spoken word pieces, music & sound works, new media & multimedia projects, and occasionally installations and stand-alone still images.
Areas of Interest:
- Virtual identity and the role of technology in our experience of the corporeal body and the IRL environment
- Genre tropes of science fiction, horror, and the music video, and their metaphorical relationships to queer & trans experiences, and to political structures under capitalism
- Speculative autobiography (alternate futures, performance personas)
- Poetic adaptation (particularly the tragedies of ancient Greece)
Current Projects:
- An experimental film about an extra-terrestrial who processes dysphoria and trauma through an obsessive love of Earth musicals
- A research and writing project on gender and criminal justice in the "paranormal procedural" genre of television
- A podcast about the politics and psychology of the Twilight franchise (American Vampire)
- Serving as the New Media Director of First Floor Theater