New Models

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