New Models

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

Olivia Kan-Sperling reads her non-linear fashion noir, “The Perfect Glove” from Heavy Traffic II "Although a whole day has passed since opening, the plushy carpet shows no footprints. This must be the oft-reported death of retail, which reminds Leo of the death of movies, which reminds him of his own death. Then again—he cheers up—dead or no, neither—stores nor movies—ever seem to go away. [...]" Olivia Kan-Sperling’s “The Perfect Glove” is a holographic short essay set between LA and NYC, the 20th c. and today. It was first published in Heavy Traffic II. Based in NYC, Olivia is the author of the Kendall Jenner x Lil Peep fanfic, Island Time (Expat Press, 2022) as well as an assistant editor + regular contributor to The Paris Review. Her writing has also appeared in Interview, Praxis, Kaleidoscope, n+1, and Cabinet, among other publications and venues. Note: For maximum impact, we recommend listening to this episode in stereo. Editing and mixing by Lil Internet.  This reading is part of Heavy Traffic’s New Models residency, which features pieces from the magazine read aloud by their authors. Heavy Traffic IV of is out now. https://heavytrafficmagazine.com See also: NM60 | Olivia Kan-Sperling on the programming logic of style https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/code-couture-olivia-kan-sperling-nm60 NM75 | Heavy Traffic magazine w/ editor/publisher Patrick McGraw https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/mcgraw-heavytraffic-nm75/s-VB0sQZYweL0

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.

In this discussion, cultural savant and 2010s historian Dean Kissick dives into the chaotic interplay of nostalgia and technology in Kanye West's latest collaboration with Ty Dolla $ign. They explore the evolution of Witch House music and its apocalyptic themes, revealing how contemporary culture reflects societal shifts. Kissick also analyzes the impact of social media on underground music scenes and trends, touching on revivalism and the cyclical nature of artistic expression shaped by technological advancements. It's a captivating journey through today’s cultural landscape!

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"

Climate activist and festival advocate Michelle Lhooq joins New Models to discuss the recent climate protest at Burning Man calling for a ban on private jets and single-use plastics. They explore the intersection of counterculture and climate activism, the challenges of organizing dissent, and the changing nature of activism in the online and offline spaces.