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This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 14 Dec 2024 | Subscribe --> newmodels.io // In part due to the rise of AI-enabled systems, we are witnessing a shift in where and how the creative act takes place. It is a phenomenon that artists Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst have been grappling with for more than a decade through their music and their work with machine learning and its governance. With their exhibition “The Call” on view at the Serpentine in London through February 2nd and their book All Media is Training Data out this week, Holly and Mat join NM to talk about a new paradigm of artmaking and artist subject. We also discuss a new kind of collector and the tech-literate gallerists that are bridging legacy cultural systems with this particular future. For more: herndondryhurst.studio @hollyherndon & @matdryhurst Source.Plus public diffusion model Spawning.ai data governance for generative AI "The Call" Serpentine North Gallery, London All Media is Training Data (Serpentine, König, 2024)
This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 30 Nov 2024 | Subscribe --> newmodels.io NYC filmmaker-actor-sibling-duo Betsey Brown and Peter Vack join NM to reflect on the making and reception of their own and each other’s films, Actors (Brown, 2021) and www.RachelOrmont.com (Vack, 2024). Deliberately tuned to the affective frequency of the internet (desire, desperation, outrage), both works proceeded to inflame online channels to the point of being overshadowed by controversy—at least initially. With a little distance, we approach the films on their own terms: contemporary explorations of the psychoanalytic depths of self, society, and platform in a cyber-networked present. Watch: www.actors.movie & www.RachelOrmont.com Read: Peter Vack, Sillyboy https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0D46C346T/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0 IG: @me_betseybrown/ & @themasterofcum Episode image: adapted from Jon Rafman’s 2024 series of Peter and Betsey for Sex magazine #14
This is a preview | Full episode released to subscribers: 11 Nov 2024 | Subscribe --> newmodels.io // Writer Gideon Jacobs joins NM the day after the US election to discuss his essay “Trump l’Oeil,” which ran in the LA Review of Books, November 3. Opening with the images of Trump working at McDonalds, the piece explores what happens when images start conveying a realness that is untethered from reality; images that are generated (rather than taken) and, like Trump, succeed by claiming truths rather than dutifully indexing their referents. This is not a conversation about US policy or politics. Instead, it considers how our current media era is reshaping how the public thinks about both. For more: https://gideon.works & IG: @gideon___jacobs https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/
Full Ep released to subscribers: 17 Sep 2024 | newmodels.io // Remilia Corporation, founded in 2021 by Charlotte Fang, describes itself as an institution, a lifestyle brand, and an artist’s colony, among other things. As the group behind the influential and infamous Milady NFT project, Remilia also exemplifies a particularly contemporary artistic practice—one in which an online swarm algorithm-hacks certain language, images, and aesthetics into relevance, thereby generating their own market. Earlier this year, Remilia released issue one of Remilia Quarterly, a “literary magazine and critical journal for the New Net Art.” Joining us on this episode is the journal’s editor, L.B. Dobis. "Remilia is a manifesto. Remilia is an institution. Remilia is a self-organization. Remilia is a lifestyle brand. Remilia is a master-planned community. Remilia is an investment fund. Remilia is an artist's colony. Remilia is a crowdfunded video game. Remilia is an autonomous smart contract. Remilia is an independent record label. Remilia is a community center for the digital village. Remilia will save the internet. […]" For more: https://quarterly.remilia.org https://remilia.org
Full Ep released to subscribers: 1 Oct 2024 | newmodels.io // This NM Dispatch monologue by @lilinternet is not about a physical place but a region of the internet—the increasingly adversarial realm of online shopping. _ Somewhat relatedly, we put together this product shortlist of baby items that we hope those new to (or curious about) early parenthood might find useful. https://www.newmodels.io/editorial/general/product-shortlist-the-baby-edit
Full Ep released to subscribers: 9 Sep 2024 | To join New Models, find us via newmodels.io // With this first episode of NM Talkcore we speak with Alex Kazemi, author of New Millennium Boyz (2023). In doing so, we bring back the format of NM TopSoil, a freeform conversation about things that are mutually top-of-mind. For this ep, that includes, among other items: personal branding and the book publishing industry, Paramount wiping the MTV News archives, y2k masculinity, history in a time of infinity information, and history in a time of AI. For more: https://alexkazemi.com https://permutedpress.com/book/new-millennium-boyz
Full Ep released to subscribers: 1 Aug 2024 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com // A few weeks ago, artist and friend of New Models, Bjarne Melgaard reached out with an episode proposal. He'd become close with actor and artist Paz de la Huerta, whose debut solo show had just closed at Rutkowski;68 Gallery in Paris. Bjarne had been painting Paz for a new series of work and she was interested in speaking to us together with him about that collaboration, her own art, and their shared healing. With this episode, we give you an edit of the resulting conversation — one that is as much about friendship, trauma, and healing as it is about media, image-making, and power. For more: Ruttkowski;68 (Paris) Gallery VI, VII (Oslo) https://bjarnemelgaard.no & @bjarnemelgaard (IG)
Full Ep released to subscribers: 21 July 2024 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com // From AI to global power alignments to domestic political sentiments in the US and EU, 2024 is shaping up to be a frontier zone year of an era to come. Joining us on this episode is journalist James Pogue who is no stranger to the edges of the political present and uncommonly adept at anticipating where they lead. When Pogue last came on the show in 2022, his piece on America’s New Right for Vanity Fair had just gone viral. More recently, he’s been penning a three-part series for Granta magazine on the turbulent power games in the resource rich Sahel region, where he spent the better part of last year. We discuss both on this episode, unmooring ideations of what ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ now mean. For more: @jameshensonpogue (X) https://granta.com/gold-fever-in-the-coup-belt/ https://granta.com/wagner-in-africa/ https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets
Full ep released to subscribers: 10 Aug 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com _ Artist Trevor Paglen speaks with New Models about systems of “influence” past and present – pointing to a transition from a world of surveillance capitalism that is potentially becoming one of PSYOPS capitalism. This conversation follows Paglen’s parallel 2023 exhibitions “Hide the Real, Show the False” at n.b.k. Berlin and “You’ve Just Been F*cked by PSYPOS” at Pace Gallery in New York. For more: Tw/X: @trevorpaglen https://paglen.studio/ Jak Ritger, https://www.punctr.art/unlimited-hangout-the-ufo-story
This reading was first released to subscribers: 05 Feb 2024 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com“ For millennia one had measured oneself against the cycles of the seasons and the heavens, or against changing social mores and geopolitical configurations. To now be compelled to measure one’s life against the pace of machine time invited madness.” In this long-form essay by Seth Price, a “cultured middle aged artist from New York” attends a winter solstice party at an “open-air, tropical-Modern” island villa hosted by a man named Trader, “tanned, with a graying mane, khakis, trainers, and a billowing linen Oxford.” The real drama of this story, however, is arguably the “practice of divesting and reinvesting meaning” in our world of signs, a world whose semiotic layer is undergoing an epochal shift .. or so it seems. // This ep is part 1 of 2. “Machine Time” by Seth Price was first published in Heavy Traffic issue 1 (2022). We bring you this reading as part of Heavy Traffic’s New Models residency, which features essays from the magazine read aloud by their authors. Heavy Traffic issue IV is out now. See: heavytrafficmagazine.com For a conversation with Heavy Traffic publisher, Patrick McGraw, see NM75.
Full Ep released to subscribers: 08 Mar 2024 | To join New Models, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com // One of the most compelling examples, so far, of media made using AI content generation is the video that artist Jon Rafman created for Kanye West’s new album with Ty Dolla $ign, "Vultures." Rather than aiming for maximum realism in these clips, Rafman leans into visual incoherence, moments where the software experiences a collapse of distinction. This, coupled with prompts that could have gone something like “gang members in balaclavas imploding like the Pruitt-Igoe housing project demolition 1971” with style tags “cult horror, VHS, America 1986, Norwegian black metal” meant the video also conveyed a sense of what we thought might be a Witch House revival. So we called up cultural savant and 2010s historian Dean Kissick to discuss. But Witch House did not remain the central thread of our conversation. Instead, all paths lead back to something more fundamental—the struggle for iconicity in a time of infinitely available content. // For more: https://twitter.com/deankissick (X) // NOTE: Dean will be helping New Models resident Patrick McGraw to stage a very special Heavy Traffic reading at EARTH, 29 Orchard Street, New York City, on Easter Sunday, March 31st.
Released to subscribers: 25 Nov 2023 | For full episode, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com _ The Girlstack w/ theorist Alex Quicho (NM74) A conversation with cultural theorist Alex Quicho. Building on the ideas of Tiqqun’s 1999 anti-neoliberal treatise Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Andrea Long Chu’s Females and Bogna Konior’s work on the girl and the inhuman vis-a-vis the machinic, Quicho has developed a concept she calls the “Girlstack,” which, to borrow her words, models the “ultrasmooth, cybergothic, and angelic dimensions of the girl’s natural habitat.” Quicho talks with us about it here. [To be clear… we’re speaking of not actual girls or the experience of lived girlhood, but a socially constructed ideation of the girl . . . girl as a vehicle for selling a product, girl as a tool for manipulating entrenched power, girl as living currency, girl as desiring machine.] For more: https://amfq.xyz/ Alex Quicho, “Everyone Is a Girl Online,” Wired (September 2023) Alex Quicho, Small Gods: Perspectives on the Drone (Zer0 Books, 2021)
Released to subscribers: 17 Apr 2023 | For full episode, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com National Art Critic for artnet News and the author, most recently, of Art in the After-Culture (Haymarket, 2022), Ben Davis speaks to New Models about his recent essay “How We Ended Up in the Era of ‘Quantitative Aesthetics,’ Where Data Points Dictate Taste.” For more: benadavis.com twitter.com/benadavis news.artnet.com/opinion/quantitat…esthetics-2276351 Art in the After-Culture (Haymarket, 2022) 9.5 Theses on Art and Class (Haymarket, 2013) [episode image: Butch McCartney / dogphotographer.eth.co]
First released: 27 Feb 2023 | To join New Models & receive our full stream in real time, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com This episode is nominally about the state of style but ultimately is about the changing media paradigm that underpins how we signal through sartorial codes in 2023. New York-based writer Olivia Kan-Sperling is our guest. She is an assistant editor and regular contributor to The Paris Review and her work has appeared in publications such as Interview, Praxis, Heavy Traffic, and Cabinet. Last year she published a book of Kendall Jenner x Lil Peep fanfic titled Island Time (Expat Press, 2022), an excerpt of which she shares here. The conversation is NYC-centric but, more so, generationally specific, pushing us to shift our viewpoint to unfamiliar angles. For more: https://oliviaks.page/ IG @dianadiagram & Tw @diamonddustpaw lucky-jewel.com Music for this ep: Cocteau Twins, "Know Who You Are at Every Age"
First released: 31 Aug 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com On Sunday (27 Aug 2023), climate activists blocked the road to Burning Man, demanding that the festival—which was founded on principles of decommodification, radical self-reliance, and civic responsibility—ban single-use plastics and private jets. While the protest delayed a relatively small amount of physical traffic for less than an hour, it seized swathes of the online space for days given the action's adjacency to so many memetic themes, incl.: #climate, #collapse, #decarbonization, #privilege, #indigenous (land), #police and ofc the punching bag that is #burningman. Much of the initial drama played out on the Instagram and X accounts of gonzo journalist Michelle Lhooq (Rave New World) who broke the story while on assignment for The Guardian. On Monday, Michelle joined New Models from Reno to discuss what she witnessed as well as the changing nature of activism’s stage both online and off. For more: IG: @michellelhooq X: @MichelleLhooq https://ravenewworld.substack.com https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-protest-climate-change-environment
First released: 08 Apr 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com Adapting climate scholar Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021, Verso) for the silver screen, Daniel Goldhaber has transformed Malm’s non-fiction manifesto into “one of the most original American thrillers in years" (Roger Ebert). As it sees its US theatrical release this week, Daniel joins NM to speak about the film, the state of indie filmmaking, and the terms of politically engaged creative production in our over-mediatized, performatively politicized age. For more: https://neonrated.com/films/how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline
First released: 25 Aug 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com Three members of the Collapsology / Crude Futures group — Richard Hames (co-author of The Rise of Ecofascism, Polity, 2022), Washington-state based writer Beau-Caprice Vetch, and UK-based producer/writer/DJ Jake Colvin (NKC) — discuss the idea of collapse, its historical role in consolidating power, its geopolitical vs. biopolitical registers, its relationship to spirituality, and frameworks for approaching adaptation to the worlds revealed in its wake. The occasion for this conversation is the publication of a zine and card game that the Crude Futures group — which started in the New Models Discord server and also includes members Mina Miller, Jack Tarpey, phm, Matīss Groskaufmanis, Jon Benjamin Talleräs, Cat MacGregor, T.M. Wilson, and Marcelino Llano — created over the past two years and released this July. Printing of the zine and card game was made possible through proceeds from the NM Codex Y2K20, and initial proceeds from the Crude Futures sales will go toward production of whatever NM-sphere initiative emerges next. The zine and card game are available at https://shop.newmodels.io as well as select bookshops in London and Berlin. For updates on the Crude Futures project, follow https://crudefutures.substack.com and IG: @crudefutures See also: NM 41 | Eco-Tomorrow w/ Sam Moore https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/nm-pod-41-eco-tomorrow-w-sam-moore?
First released: 23 Jun 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com NYC has always been a scene superconductor, replete with an infinite supply of ambitious young bodies and a world class media machine to document it all. But over the past few years, a new strain of #downtown has emerged that incessantly flickers between the physical and online realms. On this episode, NM is joined by three denizens of this New York sphere — novelist and co-founder of Forever Magazine, Madeline Cash; artist chloé waifmaterial; and full stack engineer slash man-about-town David Yoakum — to recap a cluster of events that transpired during Praxis Week, including the premier of Angelicism’s Film01, a reading at the new VC-backed Lower East Side event space Sovereign House, and the sudden onset of a climate event that amplified it all. For more: @davidy____ waifmaterial.com & @waifmaterial madelinecash.com & @madelinecash Related writing from NM sphere: - Madeline Cash reviews Angelicism’s Film01 for Spike Art Magazine - Paige K. Bradley reviews Angelicism’s Film01 for Artforum
First released: 13 June 2023 | To join New Models, find us via patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, journalist, and technology activist who’s been thinking publicly about the industrial capture of creative labor markets since the ‘90s. In Berlin last week touring his newest book, the NYTimes bestselling, anti-finance finance thriller Red Team Blues (Tor Books, 2023) and to present at the re:publica conference with his Chokepoint Capitalism (Beacon, 2022) co-author Rebecca Giblin, Doctorow generously made time to speak with New Models about the entrenched, corrosive models driving what we’ll shorthand here as corporate cannibalism. For more: Tw: @doctorow Blog/newsletter: https://pluralistic.net Site & pod: https://craphound.com Recent books: Red Team Blues (Tor Books, 2023) https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/redteamblues Chokepoint Capitalism (Beacon, 2022) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/710957/chokepoint-capitalism-by-cory-doctorow-and-rebecca-giblin/
First released: 24 May 2023 | To join New Models, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Joining this episode is Ben Solomon aka King Solomon aka KSER IRAK. Born and raised in downtown New York, Ben is an artist, filmmaker, and part of the legendary graffiti crew IRAK, which is to say a legendary part of the history of the city itself. We’ve wanted to have Ben on the show forever (in part because he and Lil Internet have known each other forever) but also because few besides Ben are better positioned to share stories about the social media that IS New York—both pre- and post-internet—and how it changed the way the downtown NYC works. (photo: Ilya Lipkin) For more: bensolomon.nyc Tw & IG: @KINGS0L0M0N
First released: 2 May 2023 | To join New Models, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Few, if any, are more conversant in AI’s impact on creative production than HOLLY HERNDON and MAT DRYHURST. In part this is because the artist-musicians (and hosts of the Interdependence podcast) have also become, out of necessity, technologists. And perhaps it’s due to their DIY drive to not just comment on but actually build the tools and protocols artists need to more effectively navigate the 21st century that they are optimistic about it. In a conversation ranging from new baselines for Art to the future terms of IP and the horizons of identity and ownership, Mat and Holly share frameworks and neologisms unlocking a fresh framework for thinking about the AI-enhanced culture to come. For more: Tw: @matdryhurst & @hollyherndon https://patreon.com/interdependence https://spawning.ai
First released: 29 Jan 2023 | To join New Models, you can find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Situated amid political communication theory, social media information economics, and the vanguard of social science methodology, Kevin Munger (Assistant Professor of Political Science and Social Data Analytics at Penn State University) visits NM to share his post-2010s framework for understanding the future of networked culture. Kevin is the author of Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture (Columbia U. Press, 2022). And on this new ep, he discusses media technology’s role in the migration of big organizing concepts such as conservative, liberal, autonomy, and progress; as well as how technological change, which is inevitable, impacts the very foundations of literate/liberal culture. Bonus: Excerpt from Vilém Flusser's 1986-92 Artforum column, "Curie's Children" For more: http://www.kevinmunger.com/ “Why I am (Still) a Conservative (For Now)” (Jan 2023) https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/why-i-am-still-a-conservative-for “Why I am (Still) a Liberal (For Now)” (Jul 2022) https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/why-i-am-still-a-liberal-for-now NM46: Boomacracy w/ Kevin Munger (Jun 2022) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/boomocracy-w-kevin-munger-on-generational-power-in-america-nm46
The first and only feature from famed music video director Hype Williams (Missy Elliot, “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly),” 1997; The Notorious B.I.G., “Mo Money Mo Problems,” 1997; TLC, “No Scrubs,” 1999), Belly is a ‘90s crime drama set in NYC starring Nas, DMX, Taral Hicks, Method Man, and T-Boz with cameos by Sean Paul, Method Man and others. Upon its release, the movie was widely panned and, due to its negative, violent depictions of young black men, the Magic Johnson Theater chain even refused to screen it. But 25 years later, Belly stands as a resonant distillation of its time, both stylistically and sociologically. New Models chose to screen Belly for the monthly NM x Trust Kino night in Berlin last week. And for this event Lil Internet, a video director himself (Beyoncé, “No Angel,” 2013; Diplo, “Express Yourself,” 2012; Iggy Azalea, “Mo Bounce,” 2017) put together some contextualizing thoughts on Belly, which he read IRL before the screening. He's adapted his notes for this NM Short. For more: @lilinternet https://soundcloud.com/lilinternet/dmx-prayer-monument-ambient?
First released: 11 Feb 2023 | To join New Models, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Artist Cory Arcangel joins New Models to chat about his practice at large during the closing days of his Kunstverein Hamburg show, “Flying Foxes.” The conversation originally aired as live video via the Kunstverein, with an intro by the show’s curator, Nicholas Tammens. The audio has been adapted by Lil Internet for the NM Audio Metaverse™. For more: https://coryarcangel.com Cory Arcangel, “Flying Foxes,” Kunstverein Hamburg
First released: 14 Mar 2023 | To join New Models & receive full stream in real time, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com In which Carly & Julian make their first visit to Dubai and return with a new world module installed on their mental hard drives. Many thanks to Shumon Basar and Art Dubai’s Global Art Forum 16 “Predicting the Present” for making this trip possible. Addt'l reading: Shumon Basar, “The Magic Kingdom: How Not to Think about Dubai” (Bidoun, 2007) https://www.bidoun.org/articles/the-magic-kingdom
First released: 19 Feb 2023 | To join New Models, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com As DIS returns to Germany for the first time since members Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, and David Toro curated 2016’s hotly contested Berlin Biennale 9, Boyle joins New Models to talk about the generation-defining project’s trajectory since its inception in the late-’00s, its recent film installation Everything But The World (on view through Feb 26 at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin), and its future vision. Along the way we discuss: subculture, pop culture, mass media, digital rot, and Gens X, Y, Z, and A. For more: dis.art @dis on IG & Twitter dismagazine.com (still partially accessible!) READ: https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/dis-collective-is-back-in-berlin-with-everything-but-the-world (text: Carly / photos: Lil Internet)
First released: 14 Oct 2022 | To join New Models & receive full stream in real time, find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com In Berlin with parallel shows at Galerie Sprüth Magers and Schinkel Pavillon, artist JON RAFMAN joins NM to speak about collective memory, the fractured self, embracing the cringe of new consumer tech, and post-net art’s post-lockdown resurgence. For more: jonrafman.com IG: @jonrafman
First released: 22 Jan 2023 | To join New Models, you can find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Creative director Katharina Korbjuhn updates NM on Paradigm Trilogy, the mobile-first editorial vehicle she launched in 2021 to address how the fashion-adjacent creative sector is changing. As Paradigm’s second release, “Man vs. Machine” is largely set in Berlin and features contributions from several denizens of the New Models sphere, we invited Kat to come on the podcast to discuss the ideas—the state of fashion & media, machine learning, creative agency, and our neo-anthroposophic age—that underpin the issue's concept. For more: https://paradigmtrilogy.com Bonus: NMTV goes behind the scenes of Paradigm's "Man" shoot in Berlin, May 2022: https://youtu.be/9M1FpaAvrk4
First released: 7 Aug 2022 | To join New Models, you can find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com In lieu of the regular NM pods, Lil Internet & Carly reflect on their time in the USA these past 2 1/2 weeks—mostly in Maryland and Virginia—and the life/death cycles and spectrum of real/simulation that underscored it, filled out by ex-urban home ownership, mass shooters, firefly technology, air-conditioning blight, new weather, dead vultures, La Croix’s disappearance, and the twentieth-century revenge of Top Gun.
First released: 4 Aug 2022 | To join New Models, you can find us: https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com In lieu of the regular NM pods, Lil Internet & Carly reflect on their time in the USA these past 2 1/2 weeks—mostly in Maryland and Virginia—and the life/death cycles and spectrum of real/simulation that underscored it. Plus ex-urban home ownership, mass shooters, firefly technology, air-conditioning blight, new weather, dead vultures, La Croix’s disappearance, and the twentieth-century revenge of Top Gun. Released to subscribers: 4 Aug 2022
First released: 10 Dec 2022 | To join New Models, you can find us via https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com Recorded mid-“Future of Critique”-conference in the former West German capital of Bonn, this conversation with New York-based artist & consultant DENA YAGO (formerly K-HOLE) and artist JOSHUA CITARELLA real-talk-debriefs some of the structural models on which legacy criticism built its house. Topics include: the museum’s changing cultural status, the knock-on effects of “anti-gatekeeping” discourse, speculative near-future museum defense strategies, the alt paths of younger artists, and what publishing models stand a chance post-2022. For more: Dena Yago, “Content Industrial Complex,” e-flux #89 (2018) Tw: @khole_dena / IG: @denayags Joshua Citarella patreon.com/joshuacitarella Tw @JoshuaCitarella / IG: @JoshuaCitarella Bundeskunsthalle Bonn "Future of Critique" Congress, 18 Nov. 2022: “Memes vs. Museums” Panel: Joshua Citarella, Dena Yago, Cem A. (@freeze_magazine), mod. Gregor Quack // “Do You Know Where You Live” Keynote: Caroline Busta & Lil Internet
What exists beyond America’s blue-checkmark core? Journalist JAMES POGUE (Harper’s, New Yorker, American Conservative, plus author of the 2022 Vanity Fair chartbuster “Inside the New Right: Where Peter Thiel is Placing His Biggest Bets,” as well as his 2018 book, Chosen Country) joins NM just before the 2022 midterm elections to sketch out the emergent USA he sees. Along the way, we talk localism v. globalism vis-a-vis 18th-century politics, 20th-century media, and the likelihood of 21st-century American civil war. Ep released to subscribers: 9 Nov 2022 For more: @jhensonpogue https:// jameshensonpogue.com
Digital design theorist CADE DIEHM joins NM to discuss his new paper, “The Para-Real: A Manifesto” (published via C/O Berlin and New Design Congress), which gives language to a zone that’s become increasingly prevalent as digital spaces merge into continuous territories. The Para-Real is not the “metaverse,” Cade argues, but a fertile, momentary form of consciousness where the physical here-and-now falls away. We discuss what this state produces in users and speculate on nth order effects as the Para-Real scales. For more: Cade Diehm is founder of The New Design Congress, an international research organization forging a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. Cade’s personal work can be accessed via https://shiba.computer.
By the end of the 19th century, cascading developments in science, theory, and philosophy were radically challenging the way Western society understood what it means “to think” — and how, in turn, this contemporary sentient human could be depicted. EMMELYN BUTTERFIELD-ROSEN, a scholar of late-19th and early-20th century art, and associate director of the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art at the esteemed Clark Art Institute joins us to discuss her new book, “Modern Art & The Remaking of the Human Disposition” (U. Chicago Press, 2021), which brilliantly and with astonishing depth explores not just the shifts in artistic conventions during this time, but also the emergent cybernetic processes that catalyzed it. Published to subscribers: 28. AUG 2022 For more: https://emmelynbutterfieldrosen.com https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo89966631.html
Artists JOSHUA CITARELLA & RACHEL ROSSIN join NM for a freestyle audit of the 2022 art ecosystem. We discuss how the economy of cultural production, both on-platform and off, is evolving post peak-lockdown. Originally released to NM subscribers 23 SEPT 2022 For more: https://rossin.co/ IG: @rachelrossin & @joshuacitarella https://patreon.com/joshuacitarella https://joshuacitarella.substack.com Joshua Citarella, along with New Models, and Interdependence (Mat Dryhurst & Holly Herndon), is part of the channel.xyz network.
Trained in the twilight of legacy media and skilled in the dark arts of the extremely online, BEN DITTO bridges communication systems and cultural logics of the 90s-00s-10s and 20s. In advance of launching his new channel, Ditto Nation, the London-based creative-director/artist /cultural-analyst speaks to NM about the physical limits of the self and the technology that defines it, platform death-tripping, ML trend consulting, and the new magick of natural language spellcasting. Initial release to NM: 8 SEP 2022 For more: IG: @ben_ditto IG: @ben_ditto_resurrections TikTok: @ben_ditto_actual https://linktr.ee/ben_ditto
Calla Henkel — one half of the artist duo, with Max Pitegoff, behind Berlin’s Times Bar, the New Theater, and currently TV Bar; as well as author of the “thrilling” (Cosmopolitan), “darkly glamorous” (The Stylist) debut novel, Other People’s Clothes (Sceptre, Doubleday, 2021) — talks to NM about scene-creation, image recuperation, and the post-2006 evolution of Berlin’s culture sector. Plus: self-mythologizing, LA lobotomizing, and the cringe self-help book secretly powering Berlin’s writing renaissance. (Subscriber release: 20 Jul 2022) For more: IG: @callahead_ TV Bar: http://www.t-v.city/ Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff: Bortolozzi Gallery
Hardboiled trend consultant Ricky Backtrace is hired by a crypto exec to investigate a new kind of marketing agency called a "cancel shop," but things get complicated when the transquadrapedal get involved. This is Ep. 1 of a new long-form radio drama by Lil Internet. // For Ep. 2, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels Subscriber release: 19 June 2022
Political scientist Kevin Munger joins NM to discuss his new book “Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture” (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022). Along the way Kevin demystifies the hippie to yuppie pipeline, sheds light on the changing intergenerational contract, explains the origins of the concept of “generations,” and considers what may happen when Boomers’ outsize influence wanes. Subscriber release: 30 Jun 2022 For more: Twitter: @kmmunger Substack: Never Met a Science Generation Gap: Why the Baby Boomers Still Dominate American Politics and Culture (Columbia Univ. Press, 2022).
Deep internet A-listers Holly (@holyyyycow) and David Yoakum (@davidy) join NM for the only podcast about Remilia Co.’s ill-famed PFP NFT project you actually need to listen to. From 4chan to Kali/acc, Charlotte Fang to Ryder Ripps, we bring you this niche history so you can judge for yourself how the social web is re-aligning in 2022. Plus: new aesthetics, young girls, and Urbit x No Agency devirtualized in NYC. Subscriber release: 1 June 2022 For more: Holly’s essay “The Rise and Fall of Kali/acc” in the NM Codex Y2K20 (2021)
Cultural savants Shumon Basar (The Extreme Self & The Age of Earthquakes) and Dean Kissick (NY editor of Spike Art Magazine) join the show during Berlin Art Week for a sprawling, late-night convo on communication and creative production in year 2022. Along the way, we note the accelerating pace of decades, revisit Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 mass-media glow-up, log a veritable dictionary of neologisms, consider whether the art market as we know is a historically bound concept, and ask if we’ve possibly reached the end of clear-cut, market-ready “generations.” Also: mid-ification, zentrism, eNFT portals, and adult drainers. [recorded 29 Apr 2022] For more: https://twitter.com/shumonbasar https://twitter.com/deankissick Basar, Obrist, Coupland’s The Extreme Self (Penguin, 2021) https://www.mcnallyjackson.com/book/9783960989738 Dean’s column for Spike Art https://spikeartmagazine.com/?q=search&input=dean+kissick&field_online_bool=All Dean’s 2021 essay for New Models & The Stolbun Institute, “Hello Darkness” https://newmodels.io/editorial/issue-3/hello-darkness-dean-kissick
NM speaks with Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Pre-history of Social Media (Yale Univ. Press, 2022), which examines the physical — and social — technology that underpinned the DIY side of networked technology’s evolution in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Parallel to institutional network culture were the proto-dark-forest communities of BBS networks and other pre-www systems. From FidoNet to De Digitale Stad (DDS) Netherlands, Kevin maps out this early territory, with a brief history of the French Minitel system along the way. Through his work, Kevin asks us to consider what it really means to be “autonomous” online and what alternate conceptions of “the internet” might be possible when we consider the broader origin story of the digital social sphere. (Subscriber release: 23 May 2022) For More: https://kevindriscoll.info/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minitel https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300248142/modem-world/
Scholar of media studies and Chernobyl expert Svitlana Matviyenko joins us from Kamyanets Podilskyi, Ukraine to discuss critical infrastructure security and the imminence of cyberwarfare. On this episode, Svitlana, who is also the co-author of Cyberwar & Revolution: Digital Subterfuge of Global Capitalism (U. Minnesota Press, 2020) gives an expanded definition of “cybernetic warfare” and what she calls “communicative militarism”; connects psychological-operations with the post-war “commercial seduction of the subject”; reveals present-day strategies of “audience production,” and unpacks the post-digital terms of mutually assured destruction. Subscriber release: 1 May 2022 For more: https://twitter.com/svitlanax https://networkcultures.org/blog/author/svitlana/ https://www.sfu.ca/communication/team/faculty/svitlana-matviyenko.html
One of the great millennial club demons, DJ and producer Dances With White Girls (aka Frog) talks to NM about the ever evolving relationship between artists and platforms, from Hollerboard to TikTok. We also talk how AI music software is changing the game, pop-up scenes, and PLUR black tie. Plus: Frog’s 12 Rules for Club Life. Twitter: @dances New Release: Repopulate Mars presents The Arrival Subscriber release: 8 Apr 2022
Writer and researcher Sam Moore speaks about his new book, with Alex Roberts, THE RISE of ECOFASCISM: CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FAR RIGHT (Polity, 2022), which finds, in the dissolution of pre-millennial frameworks for climate, capital, and governance, conditions that are ripe for the re-emergence of fascist formulations of power. We talk to Sam about the interface between humans and the natural world; the return of trad values; and strategies for climate change mitigation that short-circuit the instrumentalization of nature as a tool for capitalist expansion and/or a race-based ordering of the world. Sam is also a co-host of the podcast @12rulesforwhat and leads the Collapsology group that meets weekly via the New Models Discord and publishes to http://collapsology.substack.com/ Twitter: https//twitter.com/sammoorewrites Pod: https://www.patreon.com/12rulesforwhat/ Substack: http://collapsology.substack.com/ Book: https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-rise-of-ecofascism-climate-change-and-the-far-right--9781509545377 Book: https://dogsection.org/press/pifr/
As Ukrainian forces enter a third week of fighting off Russia’s full-force invasion, artist VOVA VOROTNIOV reports from Kyiv, sharing details from life in the city during wartime, a primer on corruption (both bad and "good"), and what terms he sees for possible resolution (spoiler: Russia go home). Image: Vova Vorotniov, Kyiv, 8 May 2022 For more: IG: https://www.instagram.com/vovavorotniov/ Telegram: https://t.me/proof_of_war Berlin-Ukraine aid on Telegram: https://t.me/ukraineberlinarrivalsupport Berlin-Ukraine housing: https://www.unterkunft-ukraine.de/ Outro audio via https://soundcloud.com/will-ponomarenko
NM Special Report: Digital Resilience & War w/ Cade Diehm On this episode, we speak with information security specialist CADE DIEHM of New Design Congress regarding digital infrastructure resilience in a time of network upheaval as the world responds to Russia’s escalation of the war in Ukraine. For more: Tw: @helveticade https://newdesigncongress.org/en/
Continuing our context-focused Ukraine Special Reports, we speak with New Models member @pdthorn, whose career path includes working with Open Source Intelligence. OSINT both describes a field of research and its diverse range of publicly available information sources. As Russia has escalated its war in Ukraine this week, OSINT — particularly the constant drip of on-the-ground social media updates — has played a role in shaping the public-facing narrative to an unprecedented degree. We ask PD about best practices for intelligence gathering amid a sea of disinformation, as well as his read on possible end-games for what may come in the wake of this war. For more: https://instagram.com/pdthorn_osint
Fashion critic and Interview magazine Senior Editor TAYLORE SCARABELLI speaks to New Models about the much-reported Indie Sleaze revival, sharing insights on its physical re-emergence in IRL NYC. Read Taylore’s related essay in Interview's March print issue (and via link below). Intro monologue: “Indieverse” by LIL INTERNET, co-written with Carly Busta. Outro music: SLUTTT x Passions "Dead by 25" (unreleased) Episode cover image: The Cobrasnake for Interview magazine, March 2022 For more: https://taylorescarabelli.com/ https://www.instagram.com/taylorescarabelli https://www.interviewmagazine.com/fashion/the-indie-sleaze-revival-is-a-hot-mess#
Anastasiya Osipova, a scholar of Soviet and contemporary Russian Culture at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-founder of Cicada Press, speaks with NM from Kyiv, sharing her first-person insights on the Ukrainian/Russian border conflict as well as what the prospect of war does to one’s ability to communicate clearly, and how that shift impacts a society over time. Recorded in 2 parts: Jan 29 / Feb 8 FOR MORE: • Cicada Press https://www.cicadapress.net/titles/ • Serhii Plokhy The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine (Basic Books, 2021) https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/serhii-plokhy/the-gates-of-europe/9781541675643/ Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation (Basic Books, 2017) https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/serhii-plokhy/lost-kingdom/9780465098491/ • Shaun Walker The Long Hangover: Putin’s New Russia and the Ghosts of the Past (Oxford, 2018) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-long-hangover-9780190058845 • Stanislav Aseyv In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas (Harvard, forthcoming) https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674268784 LA Review of Books intwv/ regarding Aseyv's imprisonment in the Izolyatsia concentration camp https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/violence-and-hope-in-ukraine-stanislav-aseyevs-the-torture-camp-on-paradise-street/ • notes on the right-wing and neo-nazi attacks on Ukrainian cultural venues https://izolyatsia.org/en/project/armed_dangerous/armed_dangerous-disrupt/ • roundtable w/ artist Nikita Kadan regarding Ukraine’s legacy of Soviet art https://www.pastfutureart.org/en/discussion-the-kmytiv-experiment • architect/artist Oleksandr Burlaka http://cargocollective.com/burlaka/bio https://www.instagram.com/maidan_nezalezhnosti • writer Yevgenia Belorusets https://www.ndbooks.com/author/yevgenia-belorusets/ https://www.isolarii.com/ https://belorusets.com/info/about • Ilya Budraitskis Dissidents Among Dissidents: Ideology, Politics and the Left in Post-Soviet Russia(Verso, 2022) https://www.versobooks.com/books/3881-dissidents-among-dissidents • Babi Yar https://babynyar.org/en
Norwegian artist BJARNE MELGAARD speaks to New Models about his foray into the cryptoverse with his first NFT project, Lightbulb Man — which, in true Melgaard-form, touches the limits of trust in a so-called trustless system. For more: https://lightbulbman.com/
In this monologue, Lil Internet ponders the rise and rise of the BADDIE—past, present, and future—and whether the metaverse will render the Baddie Body Industrial Complex obsolete, or open a golden gateway to Baddie transcendence. For more LIL INTERNET radio plays and all New Models content, join https://patreon.com/newmodels and check out our new project, https://channel.xyz
In which we speak with writer/critic NORA KHAN and artist/writer JOEL KUENNEN about deep time, rethinking the human in an era of accelerated machine learning, and recognizing the truly experimental in a culture increasingly bound by “aligned incentives.” The conversation took place at La Becque artist residency on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Nora and Joel have been developing two new books and a site specific installation, respectively. We discuss these projects, talking North Stars (plural), climate far-futures, and critical frameworks for Web3 creative production. For more: http://www.joelkuennen.com/ https://noranahidkhan.com/ https://foundation.app/blog/experimental-models https://labecque.ch/en/residency/ Forthcoming books Nora Khan, The Artificial and the Real (Art Metropole, 2022) Nora Khan, on the stakes AI Art poses for criticism (Lund Humphries’ New Directions in Contemporary Art Series, 2022)
Over the past year, speculation has surged beyond business media to emerge as a broad-spectrum cultural theme — think Gamestop, Robinhood, tokenized communities, the rise of NFT art. Reflecting on this phenomenon, NM speaks with the gonzo art world/ art market reporter behind @jerrygogosian, artist HILDE LYNN HELPHENSTEIN as well as MATTHEW CAPASSO, formerly of Christies and now director of Fairchain, a company working to secure artists’ rights to secondary sale residuals. On this ep, Hilde and Matthew pull back the veil on 2021’s art market mechanics, from the clout battles of WhatsApp collector circles to the newly NFT-centric OG auction houses. Along the way, we discuss the what and why of art valuation today; new models for gallery/artist relations, the new “now” vs “contemporary” split; and the vicissitudes of love, lust, taste, and power that propel life in this realm. For more: https://www.instagram.com/jerrygogosian https://www.larrysaltz.com https://www.fairchain.art
We are joined by the guardian angel of New Models' digital presence, designer and developer JON LUCAS. With clients ranging from PIN-UP magazine to Bjarne Melgaard to SOPHIE (†), Jon shares with us reflections on his practice at large, as well as the origins and future of https://newmodels.io For more: jon-l.com @jonlucaswebites
Artist and composer ADR (Aaron David Ross) stops by NM on the occasion of his new album, Filter Failure and launch of his label with Gatekeeper partner Matthew Arkell, Legendarium. Reflecting on his past decade of cultural production—see: Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems, Grant Singer’s iconic 2012 cult short, IRL; collaborations with Dis, Kelela, Lafawndah, Mykki Blanco, Ryan Trecartin, Telfar, Korakrit Arunanondchai—ADR discusses how he sees the industry and our sensibilities co-evolving. For more: @aarondavidross @gatekeeper-online https://www.a-d-r.net/ https://legendarium.nyc/ New Models GREENROOM, is a series of short interviews featuring creators in the NM sphere discussing their new and forthcoming work.
NY/Paris-based creative director Katharina Korbjuhn speaks to New Models about the launch of PARADIGM TRILOGY, a new publication crystalizing the gap between the legacy fashion/media sector and the post-digital — and even post-individual world — its audiences increasingly inhabit. For more: @katkorb @paradigmtrilogy http://www.paradigmtrilogy.com/ https://www.katharinakorbjuhn.com/ New Models GREENROOM, is a series of short interviews featuring creators in the NM sphere discussing their new and forthcoming work.
Theorist BENJAMIN BRATTON joins NM to discuss his newest book, The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso, 2021), which reflects on human society’s capacity for sensing and calibrating to the the vicissitudes of an increasingly turbulent Earth—and innovatively governing in turn. In this first segment of a two-episode release (Pt. 2 forthcoming for NM subscribers), Bratton talks individualism, globalism, planned economies, desire paths, clouds, and nation states. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3787-the-revenge-of-the-real For more: http://www.bratton.info/ https://www.instagram.com/benjaminbratton https://www.twitter.com/bratton https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/episode-15-remote-port-benjamin-bratton-busta-keller-lilinternet
On this Ep, NM is joined by *Civilization* publishers Lucas Mascatello and Richard Turley, as well as *Highsnobiety* Editor-in-Chief, Thom Bettridge to discuss “SELECT YOUR CHARACTER,” the style-centric site and media brand’s latest white paper, which explores the overlap between gaming, fashion, and realms of the real. Created in collaboration with Mascatello and Turley, the 136 page doc looks at the changing terms of luxury, scarcity, and even winning itself. CW: 6 Millen-Xers talking about gaming. For more: https://company.highsnobiety.com/insights/ https://www.instagram.com/thomthomclub https://www.instagram.com/lucasmascatello https://www.interviewmagazine.com/author/richard-turley https://www.instagram.com/civilizationnyc https://civilization.bigcartel.com/
Architect and writer KELLER EASTERLING joins New Models to speak about her recent book "Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World" (Verso, 2021), which invites us to expand our thinking about infrastructure from one of discrete things to the messy, polyvalent relations and conditions they share. Along the way we touch on the potentials of Web3 and ramifications of small changes at scale. / This conversation is presented as part of Stolbun Institute's inaugural season, "Shadowlands." For more: https://kellereasterling.com https://www.versobooks.com/books/3245-medium-design https://stolbun.institute is a new initiative from Seth Stolbun & the Stolbun Collection for coordinating cultural content across outlets in the face of an increasingly atomized media landscape.
This episode is being jointly released by JOSHUA CITARELLA & NEW MODELS following a period of research on the status of cultural institutions and the future of post-Web2 creator communities. A New York based artist, Josh also has a podcast, a Twitch stream, and a Discord community (Josh’s Super Secret Sleeper Cell). He’s been a guest on the New Models podcast twice and joined us last year for a public lecture on Gen-Z’s political identity formation online. We’re sharing this conversation to let you see behind the scenes of how we are thinking about our respective platforms — and the ecosystem we hope to seed in the coming months. Relatedly, the conversation comes out of discussions we’ve had with Seth Stolbun, who, this month, is soft-launching STOLBUN.INSTITUTE, a new project from the Stolbun Collection aimed at coordinating cultural content across outlets in the face of an increasingly atomized media landscape. For more: https://patreon.com/joshuacitarella https://stolbun.institute/
Before there was Instagram, there was Mark Hunter, AKA, THE COBRA SNAKE, who made his name photographing the alt party scene of the ‘00s and relaying this coverage to his blog before people’s hangovers could even hit. In turn, thecobrasnake.com, along with American Apparel and Vice, became canon for high hipsterdom. For older Millens, it also came to represent an era when signs, language, and social protocol operated quite differently than they do in the ‘20s. With Mark now making a book from his early-Y2Ks archive—Cobrasnake: All Yesterday's Parties (forthcoming from Rizzoli in 2022)—New Models chatted with him about his work past and present and the changing terms of “social" media. For more: @thecobrasnake https:// thecobrasnake.com Book pre-order: https://www.rizzolibookstore.com/cobrasnake-all-yesterdays-parties Subscribe to patreon.com/newmodels for advance access to the New Models podcast, all 62+ episodes of NM Topsoil, and entry to the New Models Discord server.
What creates VALUE in ART and what makes art actually valuable over time? Why are some images powerful while others, just expensive? Why did DAN buy a Twerky Pepe? On this ep, we speak with writer and art critic ANDREW RUSSETH about the closing of NYC GALLERY METRO PICTURES, its generational importance and how it emerged during a media shift that in many way parallels our own. Plus: BUFFET HACKING, GATEKEEPING, and a GENEALOGY of BEEPLE. Also featuring: LIL INTERNET’s COMPLETE breakdown of the GRAMMY AWARDS 2021 For more: https://twitter.com/AndrewRusseth http://andrewrusseth.com/about.html https://www.metropictures.com/viewing-room/before-metro Theme music: Alfred English, "NPC Valley," 2018
As with Non Fungible Tokens themselves, the NFT hot-take economy—particularly when it comes to big-a Art—became a hysterical bubble of its own this winter. In his radio play excerpted from NM TopSoil Ep 59, "Ghost Face Shillah," LIL INTERNET lays out the full spectrum of fresh hells and hopeful nirvanas in under 10 min. Subscribe here patreon.com/newmodels for more LIL INTERNET radio plays, all 58+ episodes of NM Topsoil, and advance access to the New Models podcast.
Nearly a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, RICHARD BECK, author of "We Believe the Children: a Moral Panic in the 1980s "(Public Affairs, 2015) and a senior writer at N+1, spoke to New Models about social contagion—from the wild, child abuse allegations of Q and the satanic panics of recent history to the witch trials and blood libels of times before. Deepening the conversation is Richard’s current work on the War on Terror and its remaking of the American worldview. For more: Twitter: @Richard__Beck Richard’s next book, "Fear Itself" is forthcoming from Crown https://nplusonemag.com/authors/beck-richard/ https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/richard-beck/we-believe-the-children/9781610392877/ Subscribe here https://patreon.com/newmodels for advance access to the New Models podcast, all 57+ episodes of NM Topsoil, and entry to the New Models Discord server.
Dubbed the “busiest man on the internet,” polymath TIM HWANG, currently a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown Univ., visits the NM pod to discuss his new book, "SUBPRIME ATTENTION CRISIS: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet" (FSG, 2020). We also talk GPT-3, predictive policing, DIY platforms, and founding the first-ever conference on memes. For more: http://timhwang.org/ https://twitter.com/timhwang https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374538651
From the depths of the NEW MODELS DISCORD comes a new glossary for ASTROTURFING and related forms of soft-nonlinear warfare, collectively authored by members of an emergent group called Shifting Uncertain Situations (S.U.S.). For more context, NM hosts Carly, Daniel, and LIL INTERNET got on call with S.U.S. spokespeople Jak Ritger and Clack Auden to discuss these new terms of engagement.
"A CONEY ISLAND OF THE VIRUS: COVID-19 IN NEW YORK" is an essay by the New York-based, Argentinean writer REINALDO LADDAGA, excerpted from a book he is writing about Covid-19 & NYC. The essay tells of physical geography, strategic cartography, and one city's urban planning as death machine on the generational timescale. https://newmodels.io/proprietary/coney-island-of-the-virus-reinaldo-laddaga For more: https://rladdaga.net/ https://adrianahidalgo.es/author-book/laddaga-reinaldo/ Sound design: @LILINTERNET Text read by: Carly Busta
Fellow in Drug Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, KATHARINE NEILL HARRIS speaks to New Models from Texas about: substance use in America from Prohibition to the War on Drugs; the political and economic incentives for the most damaging policing policies; some surprising problems with body cameras and other tech solutionist fixes; and how all of this fundamentally reinforces race and class inequalities in the US and beyond. We also speak about the politics of pleasure and pain; and the rise of algorithmic RATS. (This episode was recorded 26 June 2020.) For more: https://twitter.com/KatNeillHarris http://blog.bakerinstitute.org/2020/06/08/fixing-american-policing-also-requires-an-end-to-the-war-on-drugs/
Journalist MICHELLE LHOOQ calls into the pod with a report from the NYC STREETS (note: audio for this part of the ep recorded with available equipment/bandwidth). We discuss AUTONOMOUS ZONES and GENERATIONAL KNOWLEDGE. Plus: LILNET reads current dissent toward law enforcement as a GROWING MOTION TO DELEGITIMIZE THE LARGER STATE, CARLY cites the EVILS of UR-VIRTUOUS VICTORIAN ENGLAND, and DAN considers whether the POLITICS of "PRO-" may ultimately effect more change than the POLITICS of "ANTI-." Also: ELON'S CRINGE MAGICK, INCELLECTUALS, and SLOW RAD. Introducing this ep: LILINTERNET'S "A MESSAGE FROM A DEAD PERSON" watching humanity from the other side. For more: check out https://michellelhooq.substack.com/ For access to the full episode & all New Models content plus access to our Discord, subscribe at https://patreon.com/newmodels Theme music: Alfred English, "NPC Valley," 2018
We speak with ARTHUR JONES & GIORGIO ANGELINI, filmmakers of "FEELS GOOD MAN," which tells the story of comic artist Matt Furie and the wild journey of his character Pepe the Frog. Yet this set up is also a lens for telling an even broader and deeper story of the past two decades: one that spans intergenerational communication, magic and media, anti-authoritarian rebellion, and the volatility of signs. The documentary comes out August 28 to select audiences (and Sept. 4 everywhere). We nominate it Political Film of the Year. For more: https://www.feelsgoodmanfilm.com/ https://www.instagram.com/feelsgoodmanfilm/ Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97akfYZv28I
We are joined by UC Davis professor of literature and critical theory, JOSHUA CLOVER, who is also a communist and the author of several books including RIOT STRIKE RIOT: THE NEW ERA OF UPRISINGS (Verso, 2016). This conversation begins with the street protests that have erupted across the US in response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many other black Americans at the hands of the police. It then expands to encompass digital platforms, definitions of violence and property, the promise of communes, and the caveats of UBI, giving a trans-historical view of revolutionary resistance at the hinge points of political transformation. For more: https://english.ucdavis.edu/people/jclover https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4734-66-days https://www.versobooks.com/authors/2018-joshua-clover Clarification: At 21:55, Clover refers to the Civil Rights Act (re the 1968 MLK Jr. riots). This is technically accurate, and it was officially known as the Civil Rights Act of 1968. But that risks confusing it with the far more well-known Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is why the 1968 act is more popularly know as the Fair Housing Act.
We speak with High Snobiety editor-in-chief, THOM BETTRIDGE about content production, retail circulation, and celebrity in 2020. Thom has extensive experience working in media and creative consulting, including, among other things, having served as the executive editor of Interview magazine and of 032c, as well as the managing editor for the creation of the SSENSE editorial platform. He is also very knowledgeable about shoes. Note: This episode was recorded in May prior to the murder of George Floyd and the unrest that followed. For more: https://www.instagram.com/thomthomclub https://www.highsnobiety.com/ https://032c.com/big-flat-now-op-ed http://www.spikeartmagazine.com/articles/fashion-2
Writer Steve Marsh [https://twitter.com/stephenhero] joins us from a Minneapolis swelling with unrest to give details and context to the life and death of George Floyd (aka Big Floyd), and the history of the police department that murdered him. TAKE ACTION Support the family of George Floyd: https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd Black Visions MN (black activists and organizers local to ME/twin cities): https://secure.everyaction.com/4omQDAR0oUiUagTu0EG-Ig2 North Star Health Collective (street medics and emergency care): https://www.northstarhealthcollective.org/support-north-star-health
Writer and theorist NORA KHAN speaks with New Models about how institutional power reifies itself online, COVID aesthetics, and the labor pressures of distance working/socializing/learning via platforms such as Zoom. Nora is the author, most recently, of Seeing, Naming, Knowing (Brooklyn Rail Press, 2019) on mass surveillance and 'machine visual culture.' For more: https://noranahidkhan.com/ https://theshed.org/program/63-manual-override https://noranahidkhan.com/2018/02/17/empty-models-flattened-language/
Writer, consultant, and Ribbon Farm founder VENKATESH RAO speaks with New Models about memetics & institutions, virality & democracy, Log Level thinking, BIOS Level politics, and how to navigate reality in a time when we're all NPCs in a world going "brrrrrrrrr.” ⛓️This conversation was recorded April 7th, 2020. FOR MORE: https://twitter.com/vgr https://venkateshrao.com/ https://breakingsmart.com/ https://ribbonfarm.com/ https://artofgig.substack.com/
The Berlin-based musician LYRA PRAMUK (@lyra_songs) talks to New Models about the release of her 2020 album "Fountain" (@bedroomcommunity). For full post: https://newmodels.io/proprietary/nm-greenroom-lyra-pramuk-fountain For more: https://www.instagram.com/lyra.pramuk/ https://lyrapramuk.bandcamp.com/album/fountain Note: New Models GREENROOM, is a series of short interviews featuring artists and musicians in the NM sphere discussing their new and forthcoming work.
Berkeley-based writer and co-host of the wildly popular anti-corruption podcast TrueAnon, LIZ FRANCZAK joins New Models for a cathartic reflection on pandemic politics and the pros, cons, and probability of popular revolt. This conversation was recorded March 25th. FOR MORE: https://twitter.com/liz_franczak https://www.patreon.com/TrueAnonPod https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-century-of-spin-franczak
TopSoil is New Models' informal talk-core cast. For the full episode (plus the 31 eps before it) and to join our Discord: patreon.com/newmodels ----- Geographer STEPHANIE WAKEFIELD, trend forecaster SEAN MONAHAN, dad-artist-grocery store insider JEAN-LUC VILA, writer NATASHA STAGG, and deep systems researcher CADE check in with the NEW MODELS crew, reporting from their respective Corona quars. ALSO: DAN imagines NEAR-FUTURE USA as OLIGARCHY with CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS, LILNET introduces the other Q-Anon, and CARLY asks what everyone would stock up on during these SEEMING LAST MOMENTS of ABUNDANCE. PLUS: intro to NM Discord's calendar & irl-metaverse. AND: @LILINTERNET's RADIO PLAY featuring an on the ground report from a NEWLY RE-OPENED AMERICA's first music festival. / Recorded: Monday, 23 March 2020
Artist and writer MARIAM GHANI and Editorial Director of Eyebeam, MARISA MAZRIA KATZ speak to New Models about Ghani's new work Dis-Ease, a forthcoming essay-film that considers how the metaphors we use to speak about illness and contagion affect the ways in which we prepare and respond to epidemics and treat those afflicted and affected by them. This podcast is part of New Models' series for TENTACULAR (Extremophilia edition), a "festival of critical technologies & digital adventures" curated by Julia Kaganskiy and José Luis de Vicente for Matadero Madrid, 2019. FOR MORE Dis-Ease (site): https://www.mariamghani.com/work/1426 Dis-Ease (vid. excerpt): https://vimeo.com/373883845 https://www.eyebeam.org/eyebeam-center-for-the-future-of-journalism/ https://tentacular.es/en/about/ Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer, and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited and screened broadly, including at New York's Guggenheim Museum, MoMa, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Documenta 13 (Kabul and Kassel), among other venues. Her first feature-length film,"What We Left Unfinished," premiered at the 2019 Berlinale and is currently on its festival run. Marisa Mazria-Katz is a NY-based journalist/editor. Her essays on art and culture have appeared in media outlets such as New York Times, Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Review of Books, and Vogue. Marisa is the Editorial Director of Eyebeam, where she oversees the newly launched Eyebeam Center for the Future of Journalism.
ALEX KAZEMI is an online trickster and magick-practicing provocateur. When this episode was pre-released to our Discord community in February, it fomented vidid debate among the hard materialists, gnostic scholars, and woo-woo sympathizers. On this episode, we talk Super Super magazine, new sefirots, and Marilyn Manson's God complex, all to ask: Can magick be a framework for today's attention economy? Alex Kazemi's book "Pop Magick" was published in February by Permuted Press, with an introduction by Rose McGowan. Alex Kazemi, Pop Magick: A Simple Guide to Bending Your Reality (Permuted Press, 2020) https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1682618803 For more: www.alexkazemi.com fanmail [at] alexkazemi.com
Featuring Washington D.C.-based writer/editor MIKE CRUMPLAR, whose work focuses on radicalization in America and the systemic drivers of incel culture. This January, Mike published the first segment of a project that looks at the autobiographical writings of Isla Vista spree shooter Elliot Rodger. His Framework takes Elliot not as author, but as subject—a protagonist trapped in his own novel as an unwitting byproduct of American late-capitalism. For more: https://twitter.com/mcrumps Key texts: https://mcrumps.com/2020/01/07/blissful-beginnings-elliot-rodgers-sexual-awakening/ & https://jacobitemag.com/2018/05/21/the-aeneid-for-incels/
With trading mania having gone mainstream this winter, the market has come to remote control the emotions of millions in lockdown. LIL INTERNET reflects on this phenomenon here, in a monologue excerpted from NM TopSoil Ep 57, "Capital Insurrection," considering the wild extremes of personal sensitivity today from WallStreetBets to woke culture. Subscribe here https://patreon.com/newmodels for more LIL INTERNET radio plays, all 57+ episodes of NM Topsoil, and advance access to the New Models podcast.
TopSoil is New Models' informal talk-core cast, which we create specifically for our Patreon community. For all NM TopSoil episodes & to join our Discord: https://patreon.com/newmodels ----- Norwegian artist BJARNE MELGAARD speaks to New Models about CULTURAL PRODUCTION, DESIRE, and the CHANGING THRESHOLDS of VICTIMHOOD and TRANSGRESSION. Also: BJARNE's ANTIVIVISECTION '80s, CARLY as KERN MODEL, and whether CRYSTAL METH is still the number one DRUG of CHOICE. Plus: PORNHUB, CHIHUAHUAS, DRUGS, ANTINATALISM, MILITANT CLIMATE ACTIVISM, ANDREA DWORKEN, EMPATHY. https://bjarnemelgaard.com https://www.instagram.com/bjarnemelgaard/ https://acuteart.com/artist/bjarne-melgaard/
The Berlin-based British artist https://soundcloud.com/stevenwarwick (ex-Heatsick)talks to New Models about the release of his 2019 album "MOI" (https://soundcloud.com/pan_hq). For full post (incl. video by Dacio Pinheiro): https://newmodels.io/proprietary/new-models-greenroom-steven-warwick-moi Note: this is the first episode of New Models GREENROOM, a series of short interviews featuring people in the NM sphere discussing their new and forthcoming work.
Featuring New York-based writer NATASHA STAGG who, on the occasion of her new book "Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019" (Semiotext(e)/Native Agents), speaks to us about the myths and metadata of NYC's culture sector and the protocol for creative production in the 2010s. (w/ Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, @LILINTERNET) For more: https://natashastagg.com/ https://twitter.com/natasha_stagg https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sleeveless
Featuring LA-based musician and scholar TOM KRELL (aka @howtodresswell) who talks with us about the aesthetics of climate activism, the roll of the critic today, music as carrier signal for identity, the threshold for authenticity, the value of negativity, extraction and power -- let's just say it's a rich and sweeping conversation that offers tools for thinking through some of the big questions of our day and insight into the mind behind one of the past year's best albums "The Anteroom" (https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco). For more: https://twitter.com/HowToDressWell https://thehyv.shop/collections/how-to-dress-well https://www.dominomusic.com/artists/how-to-dress-well
Featuring TREVOR McFEDRIES, co-founder of Brud, the LA-based transmedia studio behind a crew of digital-native influencer-avatars, including Lil Miquela, Blawko, and Bermuda. Also known as Yung Skeeter or DJ Skeet Skeet, Trevor came up via the music world, producing, directing, and DJ-ing for Katy Perry and other A-list acts. On this episode, we talk to Trevor about the fantasy of contemporary LA and marketing's ability to shape public consciousness in a highly polarized public sphere. For more: https://instagram.com/whatdotcd
Founders of nonfood, Lucy Chinen & Sean Raspet discuss contemporary food supply chains and sustainable food futures, including the R&D of their own algae-based nonbar. Along the way, we address: monocultures, fear, skeuomorphic flavor, cellular agriculture, and the real cost of "all-natural." (w/ Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, @LILINTERNET) Visit nonfood: https://eatnonfood.com For more: http://lucychinen.com/ & http://seanraspet.org/
New Models speaks with Z, founder of Black Socialists of America (BSA) about the organization's recently launched DUAL POWER MAP: a critical tool for building a new economic order in America within the existing capitalist structure, starting with black worker-owned businesses and co-ops. (w/ @LILINTERNET & Caroline Busta) For more: blacksocialists.us/dual-power-map Follow BSA: @blacksocialists
New Models speaks with MAT DRYHURST & KEI KREUTLER, two figures central to Berlin's diverse crypto scene, to unpack the possible impact of Facebook's Libra coin (provided it succeeds). From the Bitcoin villages of Switzerland to Libra as an arm of US foreign policy, this episode takes the coin's tagline at face value asking, _were_ everyone to be invited the the global economy... what would that look like, how would that actually be achieved, and what would the fall out be? (w/ Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, @LILINTERNET) For more, check: https://twitter.com/matdryhurst & https://twitter.com/keikreutler
Feat. theorist and philosopher BENJAMIN H. BRATTON, this episode offers a high-gear, macroscopic mapping of Earth and its systems circa 2019 — incl. how notions of “the artificial” and “intelligence” differ across cultures; hemispheric zones of citizenship and exclusion in the age of AR; and a view of human consciousness as a geological phenomenon, a layer through which Earth's planetary system is coming to know itself. Plus much, much more. Bratton, whose work spans philosophy, art, design, and computer science, is currently preparing (alongside 5 other books) a much anticipated follow up to his 2016 volume The Stack: On Software & Sovereignty. For more: http://www.bratton.info/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/stack WARNING: EXOGENOUS STIMULANTS MAY BE NECESSARY FOR ABSORBING DISCUSSION AT FULL RESOLUTION.
Feat. artist and social theorist JOSHUA CITARELLA who has been exploring how deep online spaces have evolved over the past few years, shaping popular politics in turn — especially among younger people. Last fall when we spoke to Joshua (ep. 6), he had just published a long-form piece on Politigram and the Post-Left. In this ep, we talk to him about his most recent essay, "Irony Politics & Gen Z" (published on New Models this spring), discussing the funnel of online radicalization and what tactics the left needs to consider for more effective off-ramping. For more: Joshua Citarella, "Irony Politics & Gen-Z" (April, 2019) https://newmodels.io/proprietary/irony-politics-gen-z-2019-citarella http://joshuacitarella.com/
Featuring artist and lecturer of Internet Art at Stanford University, JENNY ODELL who is the author of a new field book for the attention economy "How to Do Nothing" (Melville House, 2019). Odell speaks to NM about disorientation in the current online space, the value of physical context and community, and the practical tactics of refusal. Plus: bioregionalism, Silicon Valley Ayahuasca, the origins of the commodification of time, lucid dreaming -- and bird watching. For more: Jenny Odell, "How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy" (Melville House, 2019) https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/how-to-do-nothing/ Jenny Odell, "A Business With No End" (New York Times, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/27/style/what-is-inside-this-internet-rabbit-hole.html
New Models speaks with Z, founder of the BLACK SOCIALISTS of AMERICA (BSA), an online channel turned IRL organization providing a forum and voice for black American leftists as well as education around the values of socialism (per Marx). In this episode, we discuss the inherent racism of the "American Dream" (i.e., capitalism), the promise of worker co-ops, identity politics' tactical deficiencies in big stack activism, and how to leverage online traction to effect real world political change. For more check: https://twitter.com/BlackSocialists & https://blacksocialists.us/
When Spotify was founded in 2006, it aimed to solve the problem of online music distribution, remunerating artists for plays. 13 years on, it is a massive data node that is having a profound effect on how artists and audiences connect. In this cast, New Models speaks with music journalist Liz Pelly, who has written extensively on Spotify, particularly its impact on independent music. She talks to us, here, about Spotify's structure, how it nudges artists to optimize their acts through metrics, and what it understands "music" (let alone "independent") culture to be. Liz also gives an update on community organizing in NYC's IRL music/nightlife sphere. For more, check: http://lizpelly.com/
The discussion was recorded December 15, 2018 at the Schinkel Pavillon in Berlin for the closing event of "PROOF of WORK," an exhibition curated by artist Simon Denny. https://bit.ly/2M42o4T The panel features three individuals working at the intersection of art & blockchain tech: scholar and creative producer Jaya-Klara BREKKE; artist and director of @furtherfield, Ruth CATLOW; and researcher and Gnosis strategist Kei KREUTLER. This recording has been made possible by the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, facilitated by Annina Herzer, Annika Kuhlmann, and Nina Pohl. It has been edited by New Models for the at-home pod-listener's ease. The panel was moderated by New Models' Caroline Busta.
CHRISTINE LARIVIERE works at the intersection of climate change and media. In this ep., she helps us render a massive map of the anthropocene (and humanity's fate therein)while exploring why the word "systems" belies the incomprehensibly vast matrix of networks our changing climate is set to effect. If you make it past the hour mark, stay locked for some hot local foraging tips. (with Busta, Keller, & @LILINTERNET). More from Christine here: https://twitter.com/cdlariviere
Berlin-based designer Cade, a specialist in weaponized design, discusses the collateral (human) damage platforms cause as they scale; questions big tech's G-rated ideation of the average subject; considers the functionality of personal mobile devices within precarious communities, and remarks on the actual inefficiency of the cloud. (With Busta, Keller, & @LILINTERNET) See more of Cade's work: https://shiba.computer/
Artist ED FORNIELES discusses diving headfirst into the toxic, hierarchal fantasy of masculinity, and the present difficulties of finding an alternative. His recent work "The Cell," which is featured in the 6th Athens Biennale, documents a LARP Fornieles staged earlier this year around the narrative of an all-male, alt-right gamer group. (With Busta, Keller, and @LILINTERNET) This podcast is part of New Models' series for the "ANTI-" Athens Biennale 6.
Cultural analyst TOBY SHORIN takes us into the Hellmouth of "authenticity" and "originality" production, discussing how the Cthulhu of platform capitalism and distributed networks is evacuating the value of creative work. See Shorin's essay: https://subpixel.space/entries/diminishing-marginal-aesthetic-value/
Teenagers rule memetic warfare, producing some of its most viral and also radical content. In this ep. New Models speaks with artist JOSHUA CITARELLA (prev. of thejogging.tumblr)who, after lurking the more radical political spaces of social media from 2012-18, is out with a new (soon to be) book, "Politigram & the Post-Left." http://joshuacitarella.com/ This podcast is part of New Models' series for the "ANTI-" Athens Biennale 6.
Mat Dryhurst, Martti Kalliala, and Michelle Lhooq talk to New Models about #gangcrafting in the age of crypto-raves and ownership in a rent-everything world. //// FAST CO. PREMIER: https://www.fastcompany.com/90253292/new-models-is-the-intellectual-drudge-report-for-critical-theory
Discussing the discussion of gender, transitioning, transgenderism, transhumanism, and trying to find structures in a liquid world... Also ants. /// Caroline Busta, Anke Dyes, Daniel Keller, @LILINTERNET, Steven Warwick, and Ziúr.
NYC-based writer and DSA volunteer Mike Pepi speaks to New Models about the emergence and future of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the shift toward socialist values within the US Democratic base. (Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, Lil Internet, and Masha Tian)
Trump Lies, XXXTentacion dies, and truth seems always just out of reach. Lil Internet, Caroline Busta, and Daniel Keller on lying, trust, and tribalism today, from blockchain to grifting, rap fan outrage to art.
More significant than how spree-shooting incels kill... is how they desire. For the second New Models podcast, @LilInternet, Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, and Masha Tian discuss the ‘supreme gentleman’ as a systemic phenomenon -- one wherein society's not-uncommon transactional model of "acquiring" women is taken to metric-obsessed and violent extremes.
Just before May 1, @LilInternet sat down with Caroline Busta, Daniel Keller, and Masha Tian to discuss New Models and the current media ecology — from e-flux to cyber-hitler, Alec Monopoly to MMORPGs.
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