New Models

Marek Poliks and Roberto Alonso Trillo, artists and theorists working in AI, delve into their provocative new book, Exocapitalism. They explore capitalism's indifference to human scale, presenting it as a meta-process that undermines traditional leftist frameworks. Topics include the illusion of interaction with AI, labor's diminishing role in financialized economies, and the concept of drag as a state counteraction. They also discuss tokenization's impact on perception, financialization in everyday examples like Starbucks, and the evolving nature of value.

This is an unlocked episode (first aired 07/17/2025) — for all NM audio, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com In advance of their new album SISTER—out Sept 12 via True Panther and Dirty Hit—EDM emo pop punk crunkcore electroclash dubstep screamo trance DJs, producers, and siblings Angel and Lulu AKA the @FrostChildren join NM to talk about making music in a memetically driven age. For more: https://frostchildren.xyz https://frostchildren.ffm.to/sister https://instagram.com/thefrostchildren Names cited: Above & Beyond, Adam Curtis, Addison Rae, Afrojack, All Time Low, Blood on the Dance Floor, Breathe Carolina, BryanStars, Brokencyde, Celine, Charli XCX, Fall Out Boy, Gerard Way, Gracie Abrams, Harmony Korine, I Set My Friends on Fire, Isabella Rossellini, Jane Remover, Jimmy Buffett, Kate Bush, Kim Petras, Lana Del Rey, Mac DeMarco, Marc Jacobs, margø, The Medic Droid, Mission of Burma, Miu Miu, Model/Actriz, Monstercat, Montez Press Radio, MTV Cribs, My Chemical Romance, Nirvana, Oklou, Olivia Rodrigo, Owsla, Panic! At the Disco, Paper Magazine, Peter Gabriel, Pitbull, Porter Robinson, Sabrina Carpenter, Skrillex, The Smashing Pumpkins, Spring Breakers, The Sound, Stüssy, The 1975, True Panther, Vans Warped Tour, Virtual Riot, Vivaldi

This is a preview — for the full episode (released: Sept 24, 2025), subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Writer Gideon Jacobs joins to discuss ontological literacy among other things in the wake of the assassination of American Christian Nationalist Charlie Kirk, which in our assessment was not actually a political assassination.  Names Cited: Alexander Dugan, Amanda Askell, Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Becoming Press, Byung-Chul Han, CERN, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump, Kevin Munger, Elon Musk, Eric Davis, Grok, Felix Guattari, Jay Springet, Jesus Christ, Jezebel, Keith Johnstone, Kamala Harris, Larry Ellison, Luigi Mangione, Marshall McLuhan, Mara McKevitt, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Carroll, Vladamir Putin, RFK Jr., René Girard, Theo Anthony, Tyler Robinson, UnitedHealthcare, Walter Ong See also: https://www.instagram.com/gideon___jacobs NM Talkcore: Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) NM Talkcore: Gideon Jacobs on Musk, Trump, and Fiction (2025)
 Gideon Jacobs, “Player One and Main Character,” (Apr. 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ Gideon Jacobs, “Trump l’Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ Jay Springett: https://thejaymo.net/permanentlymoved/ https://newmodels.io

Dive into the innovative world of AI-generated music with a focus on the new mixtape featuring 'gencore.' Explore the philosophical implications of technology in creativity, reflecting on the evolution of music culture intertwined with identity and consciousness. The conversation navigates the complexities of self-expression in entertainment, celebrating the beauty of existence and its significance in a tech-driven age. Ultimately, it challenges listeners to rethink mortality and the impact of AI on artistic expression.

Gavin Brown, Caroline Busta, Joshua Citarella, Ben Davis, Jason Farago, Tobias Spichtig and Lloyd Wise read their contributions to “What Is Contemporary Art For Today?" (Perić Collection, 2025) This is a preview — for the full episode (released 08/13/2025), including a conversation with the book's editors, Matt Moravec, Eleonore Hugendubel, and Dean Kissick, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels newmodels.substack.com From January 2023 to January 2024, the Perić Collection funded a series of informal, highly attended talks about the state of Contemporary Art. Hosted by Dean Kissick and coordinated & commissioned by Eleonore Hugendubel and Matt Moravec, the monthly event, known as the Seaport Talks, took place in Downtown Manhattan. As a kind of coda to this series, Matt, Eleonore, and Dean created a correlating reader (likewise supported by Perić) featuring texts by 25 contributors who have spent some significant part of their life in the art world. Each writer was asked to briefly respond to the book’s titular question: “What is contemporary art for Today? And what should it be for, if anything?” For this special episode, we bring you a selection of the answers. For more: https://www.mcnallyjackson.com/product/what-contemporary-art-today

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is American media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. He is the author of such seminal books on digital culture and networked communication as Cyberia (1994), Media Virus (1995), and Coercion (1999); and numerous further titles including, Program or Be Programmed (2010/2025) and Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (2022). He is also the host of Team Human and a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics as CUNY/Queens. On this episode, Doug speaks with us about the evolution (and devolution) of digital culture across web 1, 2, 3, and beyond via a synthesis of media theory, psychedelic thinking, and practical wisdom for navigating our contemporary networks. Names cited: Adam Curtis, Alex Garland, Allan Kaprow, Amazon, Art Bell, AT&T, Bernie Madoff, CNN, Cyberia, CVS, Dan Rather, Daniel Dennett, David Bowie, David Hershkovitz, David Lynch, Donna Haraway, Douglas Rushkoff, Elon Musk, Emmanuel Levinas, Francis Bacon, Genesis P-Orridge, Jake Tapper, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jesse Armstrong, Joe Rogan, John Brockman, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Chaikin, Kamala Harris, Lauren Sanchez, Louis Rossetto, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Madonna, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Buber, Martin Heidegger, Media Virus, Michael Jackson, Milton Friedman, Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, Neil Simon, New Models, New York Times, Norbert Wiener, Orit Halpern, Paper Magazine, Peter Thiel, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Present Shock, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Dawkins, Robert Anton Wilson, Ross Douthat, Skinny Puppy, Spinoza, Star Trek, Team Human, Temple of Psychic Youth, The Long Boom, The Process Church, The Simpsons, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Walter Benjamin, William S. Burroughs, Wired Magazine

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Our guest is Orit Halpern: co-author of The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023); author of Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 (Duke, 2014); and Full Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures at Technische Universität Dresden. Often in discussions about machine learning and smartness, AI is presented as the natural path of human progress, an evolutionary – almost biological – development that emerged out of human communication systems and that has the potential to far exceed them. But as Orit argues, these technologies are neither inevitable nor inhuman. Rather they are the result of a particular intersection of neoliberal theory, psychology, and computer science that generated the economic incentives, political will, and public desire for AI to exist in the specific form we have now. On this episode, Orit animates the technological imaginary that gave rise to our culture of AI, asking, among other things, how a highly adaptive, machine-learning enabled world changes the terms of political possibility and human revolution. For more: https://orithalpern.net
 “Financializing Intelligence: On the Integration of Markets & Machines“ https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/on-models/519993/financializing-intelligence-on-the-integration-of-machines-and-markets/ “Futures of Cybernetic Urbanism” in "Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective" catalogue of the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale (2025) Counter-Practices and The Image of Thought https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768640251335679 Planetary Infrastructure https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-658-38128-8_1-1 - Episode image adapted from: Marco Zorzanello photo of the installation TERMS AND CONDITIONS by Transsolar, Bilge Kobas, Daniel A. Barber, and Sonia Seneviratne at La Biennale di Venezia, 2025

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com On this ep, NM is joined by filmmaker Eugene Kotlyarenko, who you may know as the director of films such as 0s and 1s, Wobble Palace, Spree, and most recently, The Code, which stars Peter Vack & Dasha Nekrasova and is currently streaming on Mubi.  Like much of Eugene’s work, The Code understands itself both as entertainment and as cinema — cinema-in-a-time-when everyone is an editor, cinema-in-a-time-when content has become infinite, which is to say empty, a site of projection for viewers-turned-users. We talk about The Code on this episode and about the industry, about virality, idenity, authoritarianism, slop, empathy. comedy, and success. For more: https://www.instagram.com/madabouteug (IG) Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/directorscommentary Site: https://www.everybodyloves.me   Watch “The Code” MUBI: https://mubi.com/en/de/films/the-code-2024 LA: https://lumierecinemala.com/film-the-code-2024/ NYC: https://www.roxycinemanewyork.com/screenings/the-code-3-2-3-2/

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io or https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com In town for an event with Matt Copson at Berlin’s KW, Dean Kissick stops by the show to talk about art, criticism, and self-performance as well as fire punks, AI monsters, vulgarity, Ye, and the death of the hot take. Now based in London following a decade-long tenure in Downtown New York, Dean is a writer with recent and forthcoming work in Spike, Heavy Traffic, and Civilization. His essay, “The Painted Protest: How Politics Destroyed Contemporary Art” appeared in the December 2024 issue of Harper’s. For more: @deankissick IG & X

This is a preview — for the full episode, subscribe: https://newmodels.io https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com Gideon Jacobs joins NM to discuss his latest piece for the LA Review of Books, “Player One and Main Character,” which explores the logic of power in a time when some of its key agents are no longer operating in base reality. Related: Lil Internet’s “Hallucinator’s Dice” (unlocked) https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/hallucinators-dice See also: 
 "Player One and Main Character" (LARB, Apr 2025) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/ “Trump l’Oeil,” (LARB, Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/ NM Talkcore w/ Gideon Jacobs on Trump as Image (Nov 2024) https://on.soundcloud.com/kC8NzddUcGynZyZj6 Episode image adapted from photo by Daniel Arnold for Document Journal of Gideon Jacobs as the character Father Bartholomew Mary, 2025.