Press - Astria Suparak -

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"Sexuality Malfunctioned: (Performance) Anxiety, Ambivalence, Anticipation", Mar 23, 2000 Full review here.

"Playgiarism: Found footage collage was the most overused avant-garde genre of the 90s, but this program includes some of the most intriguing recent and historical works. Among them: Ken Jacobs' The Doctor's Dream, Lewis Klahr's "Her Fragrant Emulsion and Joyce Wieland and Betty Ferguson's Barbara's Blindness." - Amy Taubin, Feb. 8, 2000.

"Splice: Cutting-Edge Film Festival: Broken Music. Visiting curator Astria Suparak presents a 75-minute program of experimental video shorts in which various conventional objects are conscripted to make music in unconventional ways... The music is sparse and intriguing, while the camerawork and editing are supremely artful." - April 23, 2003. Full review.

"Screen Picks: Let's Get Tested," Apr 22, 2004.

Mixpick: Northern Exposures: With an impressively short turn-around time, the Philadelphia-based Small Change Film Screening Collective presents 'U.S. Without Us: A primer for Secession' tomorrow night at Vox Populi. Working from the assumption that the overwhelming majority of Philadelphians who didn't vote for Bush are morbidly depressed right now, Small Change offers and evening of helpful information for would-be Canadians: a dozen or so Canada-themed experimental video shorts and a Q&A with American-in-exile Astria Suparak, filmmaker and curator, who last hosted a Small Change event in April. Attendees will also receive miniature American-Canadian dictionaries.... All of the above are designed to lure us towards our northern neighbor, where public transit is beyond reproach, iPod muggings are unheard of and the government lavishes funding upon experimental filmmakers." - Joel Tannenbaum, Nov 18, 2004.

"Last Dance, Last Chance: Curator Astria Suparak leaves Pratt with a bang. Among the highlights of this last show ar Guy Maddin's Odilon Redon, excerpts from Leslie Thornton's Peggy and Fred in Hell, and Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving." - Taubin, May 16, 2000

"The A-List: Roller-skating/Film. Let's Get Tested." Suparak "has made a name for herself on cross-country film tours." - Apr 21, 2004.

"Night & Day: Thursday Pick: Dirges and Sturgeons" - Sep 26, 2002.

RES MAGAZINE:
Programmed to Stun: Astria Suparak

"Seduction is just one of the weapons in the packed arsenal of globetrotting curator Astria Suparak, who's cut a six-year, mile-wide swathe through the minds of unsuspecting audiences the world over. She started innocently enough, at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, where she studied drawing and sculpture. 'I wanted to supplement my education and influence others,' she says of her early film and video programming, barely hinting that what she really wanted to do was blow the minds of viewers with unctuous erotica, politically motivated old school avant-garde retorts, hyperbolic tales, and, well, all the great stuff that hardly anybody shows anymore, much less puts together with loving attention to aesthetic nuance and fertile, thematic collision. Noting that part of her project entails seducing viewers to witness unconventional works, she also helps foment a network of artists and like-minded exhibitors. 'I'm basically meeting the most enthusiastic, proactive, forward-thinking people,' she says, 'people who are sacrificing their time and money to bring experimental works into their town, out of sheer love and a desire to share and learn with others.'

Recent Suparak shows include Looking is better than feeling you, a program of work by women, including Dara Greenwald's Bouncing in the Corner, #36DDD, which pointedly revises conceptual video artist Bruce Nauman's sundry Bouncing videos from the 1960s; Greenwald's hilarious take shows a naked woman, shot from above in low-res black-and-white, bouncing up and down in the corner of a room, her triple D breasts rebounding with wild abandon. Adolescent boys, and Living rooms screened recently at Outfest, with work about men; both shows triumphantly tout a teeming, vibrant experimental media scene. And if Suparak has her way, the shows will be coming to your town soon." -Holly Willis

THE INDEPENDENT FILM AND VIDEO MONTHLY MAGAZINE / Guest Edited by Miranda July
A new romantic T.V. sound
"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. [See the magazine cover - a page from Astria's 1985 diary]" -Miranda July, Guest Editor, The Independent Film & Video Monthly

L'underground sur les toits
Le 'microcinéma' prend son envol sur les buildings de New York L'underground sur les toits
(English translation: "Microcinema" takes off from the buildings of New York: The rooftop underground)

Ils n'ont pas leur place dans les salles ? Qu'importe! Courts métrages, documentaires et films expérimentaux sont projetés dans les clubs, les cafés ou... sur les terrasses des immeubles. Aux Etats-Unis, des réseaux se structurent sur le modèle de la scène rock alternative. Leur vitalité tranche avec l'uniformité de l'industrie hollywoodienne...

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. « Je fais des tournées comme un groupe de rock, dit-elle. Je vis avec l'argent que je gagne sur la route, je dors où je peux. Et je suis souvent accompagnée par des musiciens de la scène rock. Pour certains programmes, ils accompagnent les films en improvisant, on change l'ordre des projections chaque soir afin que leur curiosité soit toujours aiguisée. » Astria Suparak se présente comme « curator » (« conservatrice »). Un terme évoquant plutôt le musée, mais qu'on entend de plus en plus fréquemment. L'équivalent du DJ pour ce flux d'images disparates. « Avec la montée en puissance de la génération "do it yourself", la production de films est telle qu'il faut des guides, dit Ed Halter. Le curator, comme le DJ, fait une sélection, donne une personnalité à ses choix, crée un contexte, un rythme, des enchaînements. Ça peut poser problème, parce qu'il tend à devenir plus en vue que ceux qui ont réalisé les films... »

Toutes ces initiatives font-elles naître un mouvement ? Un réseau sûrement. Une scène peut-être. « Le cinéma underground a toujours existé en Amérique, mais il est pris d'un regain de vitalité, dit Bradley Eros, qui projette des films expérimentaux dans un microcinéma de Soho, après l'avoir fait longtemps dans des appartements et des jardins de Manhattan. Ce qui est nouveau, c'est la rapidité avec laquelle tout ceci s'organise via Internet. Tout le monde communique et échange des informations, des idées, des conseils. Malgré les inévitables problèmes d'ego, il y a un esprit qui évoque celui de la scène folk des années 60. » Comme aux grandes heures du Dylan de Greenwich Village, le microcinéma met en scène l'artiste contestataire qui s'affranchit du monde du commerce et se produit en unité mobile. Dans une structure souple et légère qui lui permet de réagir à tout, et n'importe où : « L'an dernier, raconte Mark Rosenberg, nous avons programmé le 2 octobre des films qui traitaient du 11 Septembre. C'est notre force. Nous pouvons intervenir vite et nous programmons ce que nous voulons. Nous n'avons rien à demander à personne. » Entre film et vidéo, musique et cinéma, les frontières deviennent floues. D'un microcinéma à l'autre, toutes les formes se croisent, de la plus narrative à la plus expérimentale avec, pour point cardinal, le désir de s'aventurer en dehors des sentiers balisés par l'industrie et de retrouver les vertus du cinéma comme artisanat. En août, sur les toits de Brooklyn, seront présentés des films « faits à la main ». Avec des images « dessinées-scratchées » à même le film, par des artistes qui fabriquent parfois eux-mêmes leur pellicule. « Nous sommes peut-être la dernière génération à connaître ce support, dit Bradley Eros. Avec l'émergence des nouvelles technologies, certains considèrent déjà le cinéma comme mort et trouvent dans leurs expériences sur le film une sorte de joie désespérée. » -Laurent Rigoulet, "L'underground sur les toits"

THE INDEPENDENT FILM AND VIDEO MONTHLY MAGAZINE
"Astria Suparak: Experimental media curator as rock star

Clad in a puffy fur coat at five foot two inches, Astria Suparak may look like a rock star, but the ethos of a hardcore film nerd rumbles inside. At age twenty-four, Astria Suparak has already invented an unstoppable experimental film enterprise. As curator-on-wheels, she is aggressively building sexy niches for visceral and demanding new films and videos by cutting edge artists from around the world, who may seem freaky or misplaced in traditional art or film world contexts. Last year Suparak traveled to over fifty venues across the nation and abroad. From contemporary art museums to microcinemas, sports bars to Harvard classrooms, Suparak introduces all her programs in person whether the audience is eager students, or the quieter bunch, who converge in the dark corners and parking lots of undiscovered art worlds.

Growing up in Los Angeles in the Nineties, Suparak was entrenched in the Riot Grrrl scene and influenced by the do-it-yourself feminist ideology of her peers. She began her curating career when she was an ambitious scholarship student at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. Dissatisfied with departmental divisions and old ways of thinking, Suparak founded a weekly avant-garde media series that showcased film, video and multimedia works by experimental artists and musicians.

When approaching artists and distributors the teenager lied about her age and booked shows via email, concerned that established professionals in a boy's world would question her curatorial legitimacy. 'I tried to cover up that I was a teenager, a student, and I wasn't from a film background. Email enabled me to be age, gender and ethnicity ambiguous.'

The series expanded rapidly and soon audiences from outside of the student body were venturing, via the G train, to Brooklyn to view her edgy presentations. Pratt grumbled antagonistically and contested her student-initiated series, but each semester Suparak staged a healthy fight and kept the program running. Ultimately she presented over one hundred shows, but her venues soon stretched beyond academia. She presented programs at institutions like P.S.1, the Museum of Modern Art's contemporary art affiliate, and the New York Underground Film Festival. She also embarked on a tour with performance and video artist Miranda July and musician collaborator Zac Love in the fall of 2000.

And at the age twenty-three, Suparak again proved the eclecticism of her curatorial verse and mixed established hardball film abstractionists with conceptual video artists in a program accompanied by the live music of Boxhead Ensemble. The ever-changing group of Chicago post-rock music stars toured with Suparak on a bus making performance pit stops at cinematheques and rock clubs in different countries each day. Suparak grabbed on to the curator-as-rock star model and is using it to bring alternative artist film and video to new audiences around the world.

This fall, Suparak traveled solo on an extensive tour through the South, Southwest, East Coast, and Mexico. Sites ranged from the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City to the basement of an old pie factory in Boston. . She presented and remixed two traveling programs, ...Suparak's curatorial choices indicate a personal video art aesthetic that is accessible, immediate, and purposefully absurd.

And she consistently manages to draw large sold-out crowds to experimental film screenings. In Mexico City, people lined up outside of the museum two hours before the shows. The enormous Victoria Theater in San Francisco was packed for the opening night of Ladyfest. Even tiny screenings in obscure locales such as a sports bar in Fort Worth, Texas get filled. "Email! I harass audiences in each town for their email addresses, and I have built a complex system of mailing lists. Each time I return to a town previous viewers arrive with a friend, and the audience grows," she explains.

The rock-star model works. Suparak attaches her now-recognized name to programs of obscure art, which she insists on presenting in-person. She charms hip art students and cinephiles, even the occasional groupie, at intimate class presentations, followed by more public screenings at city venues throughout the week. Word of mouth builds momentum and audiences report back with glowing approval. Without a traditional budget or funding, Suparak relies on income at the door or limited support from small arts organizations. She can't guarantee her artists rental fees, but she delivers extensive feedback from the road and publicizes the work like few other curators in the field. Suparak is bringing non-commercial, alternative, and feminist art to the masses.

That's not to say that life on the road is filled with the comforts of a Rolling Stones farewell tour. Suparak has? her share of horror stories. She re-routed on tour through the South to avoid hurricanes after catching a nine-hour ride from strangers to her next destination. She slept on the floor of a kitchen in New Orleans, where a small colony of house cats walked and urinated over her throughout her slumber. Nomadic and friendly, Suparak finds herself sweet talking new friends for a lift from one obscure site to the next, because she is absolutely determined to bring you, your friends and family good experimental film.

Originally the goal was to curate for a larger institution, but independence has its benefits. "I can spend time nursing a smaller amount of very tight shows. I like the versatility and challenges with creating custom programs for specific audiences and locations" explains Suparak who is currently organizing shows for the Yale School of Architecture and an upcoming festival at the Chicago Cultural Center. She continues to plan a spring tour through the Midwest, California, East Coast and Canada and looks forward to an extensive European jaunt through Italy, Belgium, England, and France in the late summer." -Matt Wolf

The WILLAMETTE WEEK:
"For decades, fans have extolled the do-it-yourself virtues of punk rock: stripped-down music eschewing commercial appeal, brought to you via rickety vans and a stranger's floor to crash on. But of course the DIY movement is not limited to music. For every millionaire movie maker, there are legions of kids with cheap cameras in their hands. And increasingly, their work is finding an audience...

Across town at the Northwest Film Center, the New York Underground Film Festival-- the nation's premier platform for experimental film and video-- will stop by with a showcase called "A New Romantic/ t.v. sounds." The show is curated by 22-year-old Astria Suparak. A Los Angeles native, Suparak began curating shows at New York's Pratt Institute of Art & Design before programming at the Anthology Film Archives, legendary jazz club the Knitting Factory, and numerous film festivals. Working with Portland's Miranda July, Suparak also curated Some Kind of Loving, July's latest Joanie 4 Jackie compilation, an alternate distribution system for female video artists...

The NYUFF highlights that make up A New Romantic TV Sound range from surreal to ridiculous... What unites these works is their audience-be-damned commitment to personal expression. "They know this type of work won't appeal to the masses,' says Suparak. 'Without that obligation, these filmmakers have more freedom to play with form, subject material, and the construction of (or disregard for) a narrative. There's less compromising, and more passion and drive.'" -Brian Libby, "Punk, But Not Rock"

Independent curator Astria Suparak got her start running the Wednesday night film series in 1997 at Pratt, taking on the project when she grew tired of their normal programming of standard film-geek fare like Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction. "I basically hijacked the activities program and showed experimental and underground work to the dismay of the school," says Suparak. "They tried to shut it down every year. Eventually they gave up." Despite the administration's admonitions, Suparak's innovative programming starting attracting audiences from outside the university. She showed experimental films, video art, sound installations and hosted live performances.

After graduating from Pratt in 2000, she1s done her thing independently, crafting site-specific events for the NY Underground Film Festival, the MIX Festival, Anthology Film Archives, PS1, the LUX Centre in London and others. Her shows often include music or pop-culture elements. "I studied drawing, not film," she says. "so I like to explore themes that are related to music or fine arts." Her "Broken Music" event at the Knitting Factory included work by Christian Marclay and Sonic Youth. Later, she toured the show with Portland-based indie rocker / video artist Miranda July. She1s also curated a tape called "Some Kind of Loving," for Miranda July1s Joanie 4 Jackie video series, and toured Europe showing films with filmmaker Braden King and the Boxhead Ensemble. - Ed Halter, originally written for Shout Magazine

AUDIENCE RESPONSES (Find more on each program's press pages):

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY:
Dear Astria, I really enjoyed your show and thought the program was really well conceived, presented, its really great that you are doing this kind of "road work" I know its not easy but represents a continuation of a great tradition that I hope never dies. -P.H.

NEW YORK, NY:
hello! I am wondering in which town or college are you are projecting and charming and mesmerizing small youths now, a European village where the buildings listen and speak. -D.C.

"For Film: Venues in New York City" by Astria Suparak with the assistance of Leslie Stem, Prattler, Vol. 68, No. 4. 1999.

updated 11/05

	"Suparak made her name as a globetrotting independent curator. Now she's parked at CMU; her hiring, in March, makes her arguably the biggest underground art star to move to Pittsburgh in years." - Bill O'Driscoll, "Presenting Astria Suparak: An internationally knowned curator brings a new approach to the Pittsburgh Art Scene," Pittsburgh City Paper "[Suparak's] appointment and programming are also signals from Carnegie Mellon University that it's moving full throttle into a leadership role among university and alternative galleries...The on-target contemporary vision displayed by city newbies like Suparak and Warhol curator Eric Shiner, coupled with the solid reputations of our more traditional institutions, bodes well for Pittsburgh's growth and success, serving residents and adding to the region's attractiveness to new investors." - Mary Thomas, "Director of CMU gallery charts challenging course," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette		"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, Rhizome
	"I am suspicious when cool is used to stand for political radicalism or moral utility. But what Suparak has done for me is to restore my sense that cool can work as a powerful rhetorical device. Because, as Miranda July pointed out almost 10 years ago, Suparak curates to empower those who feel less than powerful. Her practice is remarkable partly because, although she speaks in the vernacular of the DIY culture on which she cut her teeth, the exhibitions and programs she puts together speak about a range of issues, and her sense of social justice is comprehensive and critical. She uses her personal voice and her institutional power to give permission to speak to those who might now have believed they had it."- Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, "The Politics of Cool: Why the curatorial practice of Astria Suparak, late of The Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, was deemed so controversial in that city", C Magazine		"Standing in sharp contrast to this text-book approach was Suparak whose exhibitions resisted narrow thinking and neat categorization—-"Come On" was exemplary in this regard. For Hoone though, it must have had the character of something he could not understand nor contain—- it was too messy, too sexy, too complicated—overall, too hot. But it was the same HOT thing that Syracuse embraced; and while probably challenging, a threat it was not. The fact is that Suparak did curate contextually strong exhibitions. This is why she had a following. This is why the Warehouse was widely hailed as a success... Suparak was exceedingly capable of creating a context for challenging and new work." - Yvonne Olivas, "Desire in Syracuse: the 'Come On' Controversy," Fanzine
"Suparak...had built a solid reputation for mounting smart, edgy-to-the-point-of-controversial group exhibitions. She featured national and international contemporary artists who engaged a wide variety of media. Under her leadership, The Warehouse Gallery was providing the Syracuse visual arts community with a quality and range of shows that no other venue in the area was offering - a breath of fresh air." - Katherine Rushworth, Syracuse Post-Standard	"Astria Suparak is a Montreal-based curator whose touring video programmes have earned her an international cult following. Although she made her name by hitchhiking across America, toting videotapes from warehouse to cinema, sports bar to skating rink, videotapes in tow, this may well be Suparak's first ever screening on a boat. Taking education, biology, architecture and history as starting points, the screening of short video artworks is here to tell us that life should be savoured, wonder is a calculated state of mind and love will survive." - Michael Connor, Curator, FACT Center, Liverpool	"[Suparak]'s fast developing a signature style for exciting, witty and synergistic group exhibits that make Syracuse a true cross-roads for art scenes in the Northeast part of the continent." -Nancy Keefe Rhodes, NPR-affiliate WAER, archived on WPS1 Art Radio	"Bracingly witty and cunningly curated, the latest show at the Warehouse Gallery, Embracing Winter was the place to be on opening night. A crowd of with-it and fashionable twenty-something Upstaters (who says the interesting young people are fleeing 'Cuse?) sipped hot chocolate and wandered through the collection of smart new works with a winter theme. All-too-familiar items like snow shovels and piles of de-icer (more environmentally friendly than salt) became Duchamp-inspired installations. Among the best of the art objects were a delightful house made of knitted wool and an astonishingly mis-sized pair of mittens, both by Canadian artist Janet Morton. Brrrrr! This is one of the cleverest shows I've seen in these parts."- Johanna Keller, Director, Goldring Arts Journalism Program, Syracuse University, New York
	"Curator Astria Suparak rounded out the week with Wednesday avant-garde film screenings at Pratt, spun with a superlative curatorial taste that combined a savvy political consciousness and sexy indie-rock-style showmanship without ever losing crucial nerd cred." - Ed Halter		"Peripatetic curator Astria Suparak has an eye for the strange and ineffable." --Amy Taubin
	"At age twenty-four, Astria Suparak has already invented an unstoppable experimental film enterprise. As curator-on-wheels, she is aggressively building sexy niches for visceral and demanding new films and videos by cutting edge artists from around the world, who may seem freaky or misplaced in traditional art or film world contexts... Suparak's curatorial choices indicate a personal video art aesthetic that is accessible, immediate, and purposefully absurd." -Matt Wolf Full article below.		"Seduction is just one of the weapons in the packed arsenal of globetrotting curator Astria Suparak, who's cut a six-year, mile-wide swathe through the minds of unsuspecting audiences the world over... 'I wanted to supplement my education and influence others,' she says of her early film and video programming, barely hinting that what she really wanted to do was blow the minds of viewers with unctuous erotica, politically motivated old school avant-garde retorts, hyperbolic tales, and, well, all the great stuff that hardly anybody shows anymore, much less puts together with loving attention to aesthetic nuance and fertile, thematic collision. Noting that part of her project entails seducing viewers to witness unconventional works, she also helps foment a network of artists and like-minded exhibitors." -Holly Willis Full article below.
Poolside	"Let’s hope that Suparak continues with her zealotry, criss-crossing the globe as a present-day video prophet, and brings us another package of tapes soon." -Shawna Dempsey Full article here.	San Francisco Bay Guardian	"Video art starlet Astria Suparak is on a mission to bring the freshest experimental works to the theaters nearest you." -Alissa Chadburn Full article here.
	"New York film curator Astria Suparak assembled this wonderful program of videos on experimental music in which a variety of artists put familiar instruments and objects to unusual uses, showing that the seen world is alive with sonic possibilities." - Fred Camper, "Critic's Choice," March 17, 2000		"As a filmmaker, I applaud curator Astria Suparak for returning short filmmakers their rights. Often thrown together by the sole characteristic of clocking in under five minutes, short films in festivals are not given enough consideration and denied their rights to proper presentation... Suparak not only held the artists together by genre (contemporary lady short film), but also gave each artist a unique context... My standards for short film festivals have skyrocketed." -Yoko Kumano, 2002
	"...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." -Miranda July Full article below.		"Looking is better than feeling you: Brooklyn-based curator Astria Suparak travels the world showing experimental media and this week she returns to L.A. with a collection of work by women... the eclectic, often ecstatically funny show...Suparak's terrific show will set straight anyone who thinks that women's media is on the wane." - Holly Willis, Mar 14, 2003 Full review here.
	"Curator Astria Suparak, the 'It' girl of experimental film and video."		"[Suparak's] selections, they're certainly unpredictable, and often take you by surprise... "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." -Brian Frye
	"Like a celluloid black sheep in a world of fluffy white feature films, the unsung short film tends to flirt with disaster--taking more risks, breaking more rules, and often deliberately throwing viewers off guard in ways that features rarely do. With so much to prove in five minutes rather than two hours, its brevity creates intensity, whether it's a condensed narrative or an outlandish mélange of disjointed images. The champion of this raw, creative art form is Astria Suparak, a New York-based film curator who's on a tour... One of her goals is 'for people to expand their minds to different forms of storytelling and ways of making movies,' she says. ...'I want to inspire others to make their own work.'" -Michele Laudig, "Night & Day" feature, "Experimental Workout", Oct 10, 2002. Full article.	Crudelia: Magazine of Contemporary Art	"Imagini in Movimento: Astria Suparak is a 21-year old independent curator of film, video, performance, and installation as well as the Film Series Director at Pratt Institute of Art and Design in Brooklyn, New York. In 1997 she developed the Film Series at Pratt - a weekly screening integral to New York's revived experimental film scene. She specializes in showing experimental film and video, and work which deals with other forms of art such as performance, music, sound, and sculpture. This program also features guest filmmakers and performers, traveling film/video and music festivals, world premieres, and collaborations with other venues in New York City... Currently pursuing a BFA degree in Drawing and a minor in Art History, Astria has studied figure drawing, sculpture, painting and printmaking. She stumbled across experimental film as a teenager in Los Angeles curious about contemporary art, gender politics, and counterculture..."
	"Titled SOME KIND OF LOVING and curated by Astria Suparak, the new installment is an oozing, unctuous bunch of sex films that swings from the low budget Freudian antics in PEGGY AHWESH's classic "Martina's Playhouse" to the deconstructive impulses that rip through STEPHANIE BARBER's "pornfilm." All six films in the collection traipse through uncharted sexual terrain, using rough-and-ready low-end video and an appealing anti-aesthetic. Coarse and scruffy, yes, but also very hot, in a weird sort of way. - "Sex, Lies and Videotape"		"SOME KIND OF LOVING, curated by Astria Suparak, features five different filmmakers presenting pieces shot using various techniques [including super-8, home video, and stop-motion animation] about sex, women, and modern culture. I love this compilation and the series idea, and will look forward to seeing what JOANIE 4 JACKIE comes out with next. If you have any interest at all in women in film and video today, you should definitely get this tape." - Kristin, "Chix in flix"
	"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. « Je fais des tournées comme un groupe de rock, dit-elle. « Je vis avec l'argent que je gagne sur la route, je dors où je peux. Et je suis souvent accompagnée par des musiciens de la scène rock. Pour certains programmes, ils accompagnent les films en improvisant, on change l'ordre des projections chaque soir afin que leur curiosité soit toujours aiguisée. » Astria Suparak se présente comme « curator » (« conservatrice »). Un terme évoquant plutôt le musée, mais qu'on entend de plus en plus fréquemment. L'équivalent du DJ pour ce flux d'images disparates. « Avec la montée en puissance de la génération "do it yourself", la production de films est telle qu'il faut des guides, » dit Ed Halter. Le curator, comme le DJ, fait une sélection, donne une personnalité à ses choix, crée un contexte, un rythme, des enchaînements.» " -Laurent Rigoulet, Aug. 2002 More of the article below.	Poolside	"Astria Suparak’s performance, in lieu of the standard curatorial introduction, brilliantly set up the themes of the program. Let’s Get Tested explores the schism between the methodology of science and foible-filled humanness. For the most part, the tapes affirm the value of the ineffable and the elusive: immeasurable phenomena such as playfulness and pleasure... Most of these tapes are extremely short, delighting the audience with a quick-and-beautiful silliness that is nonetheless thoughtful, even profound. [...Some are] formally compelling as they are playful and conceptually resonant... We were all excited to have the opportunity to see it, and grateful to Astria Suparak for embarking upon her mission to take video art wherever there is an audience: schools, sports bars, artist collectives, living rooms, skating rinks, churches, even artist-run centres! Rarely can Winnipeggers see current, cutting-edge digital or electronic art from other regions without hopping on a plane ourselves. The overwhelming success of Let’s Get Tested at Video Pool and the flurry of discussion and critique it has provoked are a testament to an appetite for more. Let’s hope that Suparak continues with her zealotry, criss-crossing the globe as a present-day video prophet, and brings us another package of tapes soon. Be they good, bad, or ugly, we will lift our hands into the air and say say, yes, we love the medium." - Shawna Dempsey, 2005 Full essay here
	"...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. Suparak culls curatorial inspiration from her everyday life..."- Dec 5, 2002 Full review here.		"Reel World: Basement Films has roped in yet another underground celebrity. Astria Suparak [guest] curator of the NY Underground Film Festival, will be in Albuquerque... as part of her current Southwest/Mexico tour. Suparak will be screening 'Dirges and Sturgeons,' a collection of new experimental/independent films from America and Europe that she originally assembled for the Anthology Film Archives in New York... [which] feature assorted low-fi ruminations on today's high-tech culture..." - D. O'Leary, Oct 3, 2002.
	"With skyrocketing film prices all over the city, we are more and more fortunate to have Pratt Filmz here on campus. Run by Astria Suparak, this free in-house film festival is the recipient of last year's Campus Cultural award... She hosted a particularly memorable Erotica week... This semester the Filmz focus will be international films and performance work. Pratt Filmz will run, as usual, Sunday and Tuesday nights at 9pm, with a new film each week... Five countries already in the lineup this season. In additional to the international focus, Suparak is planning several performance art documentations, and corresponding live performances by these artists... Each week at Pratt Filmz, Suparak posts a list of film events in the city. The list is comprehensive and well researched..." - 1998, Vol. 67, No.1		"Astria Suparak: Let's Get Tested. Having traveled from Napoli, Italy to Normal, Illinois, independent film, video and audio curator Astria Suparak brings her well-chosen traveling program of experimental shorts by North American artists to Columbus College of Art and Design next week." - Nov 3, 2004 Full review here.
	"Highlights from the Ladyfest program: Looking Is Better Than Feeling You: This irreverent, rebellious, and self-parodying film program takes on punk rockers, politicians, parents, and posers who fake it like they mean it." - July 24, 2002.		"Pop Philosophy: Putting the "Grr!" in grrl power...Renowned New York film curator Astria Suparak delivers Looking Is Better Than Feeling You, a compendium of the latest cool underground shorts." - July 24, 2002.
	"Rep picks: Ladies and Boys and Touching: Astria Suparak, the prolific young curator from New York, presents a collection of selections from her recent programs in "Ladies and Boys and Touching,' originally created for the Chicago Cultural Center... This collection of self-conscious performances. Ladies, boys, and tactile movement run through these works, which celebrate the artifice of art, relationships, and actions..." - Koh, Mar 12, 2003.		"Doin' it for themselves: Feminist arts and activism infuse Bay Area Ladyfest": "Thursday night's opening program, 'Looking is Better Than Feeling You'.. curated by New York's Astria Suparak, features shorts about self-image..." - July 23, 2002. Full article here.