New Models Podcast

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.

NM speaks with Baltimore artist and filmmaker Thomas Faison who was on the ground in Washington, DC during the January 6th siege on the US Capitol, and documented the day's events. The picture Faison relays lends important nuance to a scenario that is both messier and stranger than mainstream Left and Right political narratives suggest. For more: https://faison.systems https://www.instagram.com/nousfaisons/ https://www.instagram.com/quaran.tv/ For all NM podcasts: https://patreon.com/newmodels

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 CONTEST OF SWORDS: HOW HUNTER BIDEN’S PENIS SAVED AMERICA. A radio play by @lilinternet // CW: 18+ extremely inappropriate content Made possible by the NEW MODELS community. https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.io

"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.