We talk with Alexander Melamid, the most famous Soviet-American artist of his generation. He moved to NYC in late 1970s after being an underground artist in Moscow for a decade — part of the creative duo Komar & Melamid.He was a success in the NY art world overnight and knew Warhol and everyone who is anyone in the art scene back in the day. Since then he’s lost his optimistic naivete about art but has kept his High Priest of the Art Church status and has been trying to destroy the art world from within — denouncing it, calling modern art senile, and saying artists are welfare queens. He believes it’s not money that corrupted art — it’s the artist who wanted money, and got it. His advice to young artists is to get the hell out of the profession and he suggests creating reeducation camps for them to become plumbers. Alexander is full of great one liners — “hubris is the definition of our profession,” “trump is the artist in chief”…Enjoy the show.—EvgeniaSubscribe to NEFARIOUS RUSSIANS today! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe
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1:36:00
Vibe Shifts w/Mark Ames
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe talk to our friend Mark Ames about nihilism, cynicism, culture wars, Red Scare, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Russia of the 1990s, and the vibe shifts of America’s political culture — from punk to the podcasts of today. —YashaWant to know more? Read Evgenia’s hit essay “Against Nihilism” and listen to our ongoing series…
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2:35
Red Scare Bonus Pillow Talk
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe recorded this in bed over a week ago while we were in Miami — mostly for our ourselves…to talk through some ideas and concepts. We weren’t going to release it. But I gave it a listen and I thought we had a great conversation — genuine pillow talk before going to bed.Some of the things we discuss: the start of our crusade against Red Scare, Anna K’s ties and similarity to Mike Cernovich, the beta-lib-husband-turned-pick-up-artist-turned-MAGA-boy-turned-trad-dad-influencer. We also talk about the pick up artist self help scene, Roosh…and how a lot of that world went trad and renounced their early whoring. And we discuss how the Red Scare women are the counterpart to the Cernovich and Tate influencer types — but they poison the minds of young women, rather than young men. One thing that these influencers push, especially the trad types, is that having a family means you naturally adopt The Zone of Interest politics — that this is just how the world works. But this is a lie. There is nothing natural about it. You can be a father or mother without adopting a nihilistic view where nothing and nobody matters outside your immediate family. I know this personally... Enjoy the ep. Sweet dreams.—YashaListen to our two previous episodes on Red Scare:
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1:01
"Anora" and Russians at the Oscars
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.nefariousrussians.comWe record an emergency ep to talk about Sean Baker’s sweep at the Oscars with his new film Anora. We talk about Sean Baker’s sentimental style and his “changemaker” interest in stories of marginalized people. He comes from good New Jersey suburb but the only layer of American society he’s interested in are the lower classes — the delivery workers, trans prostitutes, third rate porn stars, strippers, poor immigrants. We discuss our opinion of the film, the reaction that other Russians had to it, and end up talking about Todd Solondz a lot, who like Sean Baker, grew up in upper-middle-class suburban New Jersey but couldn’t be a more different director.As a bonus, I tell the story of how I tried to score heroin on the LA corner where a lot of the action in Tangerine, Baker’s breakthrough hit film about transgender prostitutes, takes place…and how I ended up going to a gay brothel in West Hollywood.Do the Anora Oscar wins signal that Hollywood is ready to reset relations with Russia? Only time will tell.—YashaPS: We discuss Evgenia’s short film Changemaker — watch it here.
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3:55
Red Scared
We continue our discussion of Red Scare’s turn into a real red scare platform. We have been doing deconstruction of their rhetoric on Twitter the past week, which has been going viral and has been drawing all the nastiness and poison of the Red Scare universe to the surface for everyone to see. And we’ve come to a very grim conclusion about the nature of this podcast project, and it’s this: What Red Scare promotes as “good” politics is captured by The Zone of Interest — where the happy family of the commander of Auschwitz lives on the other side of the wall from the death camp surrounded by sounds of suffering and not caring. They see themselves as good people. These are the morals that the Red Scare women want to push on people. To them the only thing that makes you a “good” person is treating your family and friends right. That’s it. The pain and suffering of other people doesn’t matter. In fact, it doesn’t even exist. And if you care about anyone outside your little world, you’re fake and manipulative and just projecting your own mental issues onto the world. Our world is already a series of Zones of Interest. But what Red Scare tries to do is to sell this kind of cynical tribalism as something cool and avant-garde. They’ve become agents of nihilism.We want to draw the line in the sand and call it what it is, and to remind young (and not so young) people that there is a black and white and good and bad in cases like this. Not everything is gray. —EvgeniaListen to part one of our Red Scare saga: Red Scare's Wake……and subscribe for more and join us on the chat. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nefariousrussians.com/subscribe
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