A New Romantic T.V. Sound: Astria Suparak
Miranda July
THE INDEPENDENT
July 1, 2002
The reason that everyone tries to sell to teenagers is that teenagers are HUNGRY PEOPLE. And just as insecure, self-conscious people make often make wildly good art, so do hungry people make good curators. We are all experts at giving the thing we want most. So what would happen if a teenager applied her channel-surfing skills to programming? Astria Suparak was nineteen when she started showing movies at her college, Pratt in Brooklyn. She had spent her first years in NY majoring in drawing and quietly watching the moves of curators like Bradley Eros and Brian Frye. She wondered if she could be their peer, as a very young woman without a film background. She decided that she could not because let’s face it, she was totally hot and had nothing and therefore she was very likely to get fucked if she risked having idols. So she aspired instead to the DJ style, looking for the arc of the set, feeling the audience energy, and staying on the fly with it all. At age twenty-four Astria has curated all over the U.S. and Europe, testing out new programs at NY’s best venues and then touring with them like a kid with a band. She comes to you: museums and galleries, universities, independent/underground film festivals and micro-cinemas, as well as public places like bars, community centers, and living rooms. Just imagine what the young girls who watch her shows think – hunger, desire and the power to choose are suddenly instruments like guitars and video cameras. And it all starts with a list in a diary.
Here Astria gives us her lists, four programs she’s curated in the last few years and the feelings that were in her heart and soul when she was making them.
The cover of the special pull-out section on Experimental Film, guest edited by Miranda July, features a page from Astria Suparak’s 1985 diary.
Read online: http://independent-magazine.org/2002/07/new-romantic-t-v-sound
Astria Suparak 