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