"I love You More Than You Love Yourself" is the 3rd song from Austra's brilliant
Future Politics to get video treatment. It's inspired by the story of Lisa Nowak, a former NASA astronaut who flew into space and was charged with attempted kidnapping, burglary, and battery a year later (
read more). Nowak was derided in the media even though the attack stemmed from mental illness. Katie plays Nowak and attempts to reclaim the narrative.
The video is based on NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak. What drew you to her story?Austra: I was kind of upset with the way her story has been portrayed. There’s a photo of her in her NASA spacesuit, looking very wholesome and happy. I found it so insensitive that there was no regard for the fact that she was a NASA scientist who went to space before the age of 30. She’s a total genius! Lisa had a breakdown, and I don’t think there was any compassion for mental health at all in her story and in the (media) narrative (surrounding it), so we wanted to try, in some ways, to give her a bit of justice.
You also play Nowak in the video – what was it like taking on that role?Austra: That was the craziest video I’ve ever made. It took two 12-hour days of shooting – it was the most intensive shoot I’ve ever done – and the whole thing was done with a secret camera, taking it into places we weren’t allowed to and just shooting there until we got kicked out. I didn’t really have to do much acting because the situation itself was so weird and uncomfortable, going to these strip malls wearing a NASA spacesuit. Being a non-actor, it’s more effective to put me in a difficult situation and have that much more easily capture the tension of what it must have felt like when she was actually doing it.
What does Future Politics mean to you?Austra: Future Politics is speaking of your own personal politics, rather than politics in general. It’s really about breaking down barriers in the way that people think. I think that if we can really get into the minds of people, then that’s the only way we can experience greater change in society. It’s encouraging people to think differently, to realize that there are a lot of boundaries surrounding us, and encouraging this discussion about what things would look like if they weren’t there.
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