V MAGAZINE: Astria Suparak

“This issue of V ART records Thai-American artist Astria Suparak’s long-term research project ‘Asian futures, without Asians.’ She uses precise language like a scalpel cutting through the ‘human beings’ that Hollywood science fiction films and television are keen to depict.”

Finite Horizon

An amalgamated skyline of Asian futures imagined by white filmmakers. Sourced from sci-fi movies and television shows that depict a vice-ridden, dangerous world overtly marked with elements of East, Southeast, and South Asian architecture.

ON THE NEON HORIZON

A short video essay that takes one of the world-building tics of white science fiction — gratuitous signage in Asian languages — to consider its utopian potential and dystopian applications.

VIRTUALLY ASIAN

Short video essay that looks at how white science fiction filmmakers fill the backgrounds of their futuristic worlds with hollow Asian figures—in the form of video and holographic advertisements—while the main cast (if not the entirety of their fictional universe’s population) is devoid of actual Asian people.