Interview with Astria Suparak
Lauren Cornell
Rhizome
Sept. 2008
Excerpt:
Astria Suparak took the position as Director at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Spring 2008. This fall, she begins an ambitious calendar of exhibitions that includes a solo show by researcher-artist Julia Christensen and a retrospective of the prankster-politico collective, the Yes Men. Before this position and a stint at the Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, Suparak developed her distinctive style as an independent curator; from 1998-2006, she created touring packages of emerging video and new media works and took them on the road, stopping at Museums, high schools, film festivals and dime stores, introducing audiences, mainly in North America and Europe, to a new generation of artists working with the moving image. One show was organized in collaboration with this interviewer entitled Elusive Quality. This interview took place over email before her fall calendar at the Miller Gallery began and sketches out a curatorial career that went from toting video and film prints in a suitcase to more rooted practice. – Lauren Cornell
LAUREN CORNELL: In the ’90s, the globetrotting independent curator, bouncing from biennial to biennial, was something of a phenomenon. Your style of independent curating was noticeably different: your interest in emerging artists, non-traditional exhibition spaces and video and media art set you apart. Can you talk briefly about how and when exactly you became an independent curator?
Read full interview here: http://rhizome.org/editorial/2008/sep/19/interview-with-astria-suparak
Astria Suparak 