“These works address ideas of looking – of the pleasures and intimidating powers of The Gaze – in subtle ways. These artists are asking questions that cannot and will not be answered by manifestoes; they are forcing the viewer to look, and to look at them and their lives.”
These audios + videos are forcibly lonely and nihilistically sweet. They’ll pin you down and slowly drip spit on you, whether you’re practicing crossovers on a suburban driveway or pile-drivers in a backyard wrestling ring. I’ve got the moves if you’ve got the skills (together we could make a great team).
With an irreverence for punk rockers, adults like parents and politicians, non-adults like breasts and babies, and people we generally approve of such as artists and scientists, these works reveal that posers are sometimes better than the real thing.
“The champion of this raw, creative art form is Astria Suparak, a New York-based film curator who’s on a tour”
“Some of the biggest names in contemporary performance and video art celebrate women acting up and acting out in Looking Is Better Than Feeling You”
“A l’avant-garde de cette scène bouillonnante s’imposent des figures hybrides, comme la jeune et jolie Astria Suparak. Pour les programmes de courts métrages ou de vidéos qu’elle choisit et assemble, la New-Yorkaise de Brooklyn va chercher le public là où il se trouve, dans les musées ou dans les clubs, les cafés ou les discothèques.”
“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.” – Miranda July
“…the curators’ gossamer touch with heavyweight artists and themes.”
“Playful laments indeed, these new works use lo-fi aesthetics to critique high technology and mass-produced culture.”
These works are brazenly aware of their own representation, those fake gestures symbolizing love, and the self-proclaimed identity of Art. On the other hand, this is a Science Fair. We’re interested in breeding and practicing our (dance) moves until perfection is reached, and by golly you’re either with us or against us. Young people, always forward!
YACHT: Young Artists Challenge High Technology (for a Total eclipse of the heart). These new videos from America and Europe have tying threads of: the use of high (?) technology or the idea of “future” in a lo fi way, dopplegang/replication, instant nostalgia as the residue of planned obsolescence, states of limbo. High and low (fidelity and culture).
“Compelling, magnetic, perfectly imperfect. This is performance art at the cutting edge but eminently accessible and personal. It is relevant, it is wonderful.”
Musicians improvise live to an international program of new short films on a six-country tour.
“Following the resounding success of her programme at the Anthology Film Archives (NYC), curator Astria Suparak is now taking Dirges and Sturgeons on a tour of five American cities. In New York the programme… received accolades from both filmmakers and the press.”
“Peripatetic curator-at-large Astria Suparak presented an excellent program of ephemeral and often willfully hermetic short films and videos titled A New Romantic TV Sound.”
“strong of theme, and a must for visual music fanatics.”
“If you have any interest at all in women in film and video today, you should definitely get this tape.”
Video art, experimental film, and audio composition with an art-school edge, reinventions of 1960s body/performance art and 1980s New Wave aloofness.
“An appealing anti-aesthetic. Coarse and scruffy, yes, but also very hot, in a weird sort of way.”
“Peripatetic curator Astria Suparak has an eye for the strange and ineffable.”
Astria Suparak 