New Models

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In recent episodes, you’ve heard us mention the project we created this spring with Joshua Citarella, together with the spatial design studio sub, for “Strange Rules” at Palazzo Diedo, Venice. On this episode, we chat with Josh about this work. The exhibition, which was curated by Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst, and Hans Ulrich Obrist with Adriana Rispoli, presents practices that engage with the "protocol layer” — in other words, the rules that determine how culture is created, transmitted, remembered.

For more text & images:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/online-of-ideas-160600874
https://substack.com/home/post/p-201216984

Joshua Citarella / Doomscroll: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4pEm3-yshBWa7nH3sQIKHQ

This is preview (full ep released to subscribers 06/03/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com

We talk a lot on this show about the “content” layer being compromised; how, given the physics of the feed, the creative act increasingly happens at the protocol level. While this is true, good books and films and records are, in fact, still being made. On this ep, friend of New Models Steven Warwick comes by on the occasion of his two new albums — "Live at Café Oto" (P-A-N) and, from his new band with Iván Brito, GUSH, "Splash of Milk" (Huntleys + Palmers) — to chat about making music, touring, and putting out albums in 2026.

https://p-a-n.org/product/steven-warwi…iveatcafeoto-pan163/
https://huntleyspalmers.bandcamp.com/album/gush…of-milk-lp

For more:
https://instagram.com/ohmygushhhhh
https://instagram.com/sweetie_darling_bebe
https://stevenwarwick.info

This is preview (full ep released to subscribers 04/17/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discord, subscribe: patreon.com/newmodels & newmodels.substack.com

"Anyone that claims they understand the world — this immediately marks them out as a fraud."
— Kevin Lee Kharas

After the imperial collapse (40 global offices, thousands of employees, bankruptcy), VICE magazine is now run by a lean, London-based team — and it is making one of the best culture publications currently in circulation. Ben Ditto (Vice global editorial director; founder of Ditto Nation; creative dir. Yaya Labs; founding creative dir. Dazed Beauty) and Kevin Lee Kharas (Vice editor-in-chief and co-founder of the electronic duo @real_lies ) come on New Models to discuss their current “Not The Photo Issue” (feat. Dean Kissick x Adam Curtis, Bertie Brandes, Mat Dryhurst, Günseli Yalcinkaya, Duncan Wilson, and others) and their media philosophy at large.

Subscribe to VICE:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/introducing-the-not-the-photo-issue-of-vice-magazine-pre-order-now/
For more:
NM49 | GPT Ditto w/ Ben Ditto: https://soundcloud.com/newmodels/gpt-ditto-w-ben-ditto-nm49

This is preview — to access full episode and all New Models' content, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels & https://newmodels.substack.com

We’re joined by media scholars Daniël de Zeeuw & Sal Hagen, who have been closely tracking the weirder end of the internet for over a decade—their research and analysis of 4chan has made them low-key legends within internet studies. As 4chan’s logic is now pervasive across the social web, Daniël and Sal, together with their colleagues at the Amsterdam-based OILab, have been modeling novel ways of thinking about our current communication space that travel well beyond the network media / public sphere template to something far stranger — and more accurate.

For more:
https://oilab.eu/
https://salhagen.nl/
https://www.uva.nl/en/profile/z/e/d.dezeeuw/d.dezeeuw.html

Hagen, S., de Zeeuw, D., & Venturini, T. (2025). Digital Rhythmanalysis: Studying Memetic and Affective Rhythms on the Post-Viral Web. Platforms & Society, 2.

de Zeeuw, D., Birchall, C., & Knight, P. (2025). On Psyop Realism. Cultural Politics, 21(2), 240-257

Hagen, S. (2024) Reactionary Rhythm: Quali-quantitative studies of 4chan/pol/. PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam

Hagen, S., & de Zeeuw, D. (2023). Based and confused: Tracing the political connotations of a memetic phrase across the web. Big Data & Society, 10(1)
Nepost

This is an unlocked episode of New Models (originally released 01/31/2026) — to access all our content & to join the NM Discordd, subscribe: https://patreon.com/newmodels https://newmodels.substack.com
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Gideon Jacobs returns to NM with his third essay in a trilogy for the LA Review of Books that tracks, in real-time, the American Political machine’s delamination from everyday life through runaway story-drive. In “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” Gideon shows US politics both left and right as having become a read-write medium for collective creative expression more than material governance—a kind of kayfabe where ‘democracy’ takes the form of citizens co-creating storyline with their elected officials and everyone in office has an IMDB profile. Carly & Lil Internet intro this ep with a short conversation drawing out themes across this trilogy that feel particularly NM Canon.

“Of course, long before any advanced communication technologies, humans had been drawn not just to stories but also to the possibility of living as characters within them. Story’s appeal had always been precisely that it’s not like reality. […] a dream of existing free from the pesky flaws intrinsic to reality: uncontrollability, unpredictability, vulnerability, mundanity, complexity, incoherence, confusion, pain.”

Audio production: Lil Internet

For more:
https://gideon.works/
Gideon Jacobs, “MAGA as Fan Fiction,” (Jan 2026)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-elon-musk-image-patel-maga-reality/
Gideon Jacobs, “Player One and Main Character,” (Apr 2025)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/player-one-and-main-character/
Gideon Jacobs, “Trump l’Oeil,” (Nov 2024) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/trump-loeil/