Unpanel
Organized for the 2018 Cincinnati Art Book Fair, the “Unpanel” aimed to dissolve the traditional academic conference-style panel in favor of a gathering that centered audience participation. The unpanel featured Jessica Caponigro’s A Momentary Collection of Our Combined Secrets and Jesse Malmed’s Word on the Street interactive *performances.
Jessica Caponigro blends egalitarian concepts with ritual, exploring ideas of restriction through repetition, reproduction, and accessibility. Before its dissolution, she was a founding member of the non-anonymous W.I.T.C.H. Chicago, as well as the feminist art collective Tracers. She frequently facilitates workshops and speaks on panels, recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the University of Kentucky, Oberlin College, and NYU Florence. Her writing has been published on the Women's Museum of California website, American Fly Trap No. 1: The Post Truth Issue, the Mid America Print Council Journal, and Chicago Artist Writers. She currently lives and works in Boston, where she operates Snake Hair Press, an independent publisher of zines, multiples, and artist books.
Jesse Malmed is an artist, curator and educator living and working in Chicago. His work in moving images, performance, text and occasional objects has exhibited widely in museums, cinemas, galleries, bars and barns. His platformist and curatorial projects include the Live to Tape Artist Television Festival, programming at the Nightingale Cinema, Western Pole, the mobile exhibition space and artist bumper sticker project Trunk Show (with Raven Falquez Munsell), programming through ACRE TV and organizing exhibitions, screenings and performance events both independently and institutionally. Originally from Santa Fe, he earned his BA from Bard College and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
*My initial programming included a food element but we were unable to coordinate due to food handling permits. As a last minute substitute, we organized the Tender Blind Speed Zine Collaborator Dater Game Show.