Art. Film. Entertainment. Are these industries distinct, and should they be? One afternoon in late February, the President and Founder of Cultural Counsel and publisher and co-founder of Affidavit Discovery, Adam Abdalla, hopped on a Zoom call with Eric Kohn, head of film strategy and development for the multimedia design collective 

. Prior to EDGLRD, Kohn spent 17 years at 

, helming its transition from a grassroots DIY publication for the independent film world to a consumer-facing entertainment publication. For this in-the-weeds discussion, the two delve into the evolving face of the entertainment industry, the systems that comprise it, and where they see it all going.

: How has the independent film industry evolved since you started 17 years ago?

: The American independent film industry is quite young, and it was created under circumstances that didn't involve a long-term strategy. Even though there have always been projects that were made outside of the traditional entertainment system, it wasn't really until 1989, when 

 premiered at Sundance and sold overnight to Miramax, that there was this sudden birth of enthusiasm for independent film. Low-budget filmmaking clearly had tremendous upside.

And so, through that process, you had the creation of an entire middle class of filmmaking outside of the studio system, and people who wanted to finance films at that level. Those are movies that could be made for maybe three or five million dollars. The advent of streaming both overinflated the market, with movies being financed for way more than they actually should cost, and then oversaturated it, causing the bubble to burst. Because of that, we lost that space for middle-class filmmaking, and that's where the best stories are told. It's where the most adventurous kind of artistry takes place for that medium.

: In other parts of the world, in Europe in particular, the government subsidizes that kind of storytelling. We don't have that infrastructure in this country, and as a result you need other kinds of workarounds. What I'm not seeing is the nonprofit model being the best place to do that, because the funds are constantly changing, and very limiting in a way. What's changing is that the entire business model through which this work gets supported has to shift. At EDGLRD, we've been trying to figure out a way to make movies however we want to make them, as experimental and risky as we want them to be, and take a lot of the economic pressure off of that because we can exist in other markets.

: Working in strategy and development at EDGLRD, how do you think about those aspects of your job in terms of bringing in new talent and new projects? How does your experience in the media shape that thinking?

: I always said that anybody who thinks it's a bad year for movies hasn't seen enough of them. I'm constantly on the hunt for new talent, and I know it's out there. The difference between what I used to do and what I do now is that I used to be looking for talented young directors. Now I'm looking for talented young 

, because I think the current youth culture is much more invested in multidisciplinary approaches to art. We're talking to rappers, VFX artists, and skateboarders, and we're funneling all of that creativity into the approach we want to take to make movies, TV series, and games. The mandate is broader in that regard, but there's a curatorial process that's still very much the same.

: Worldbuilding. How does that relate to your audience?

: Conversations around worldbuilding have been ongoing long before the entertainment business we see today. You can't have this discussion without talking about 

, which is an industry buzzword that started in academia and then suddenly became studio lingo for creating interconnected stories that are part of some unifying IP. People don't use it as much now because it feels outdated. But the truth is that the early conversations around transmedia were an important way to understand what worldbuilding is and why it's so challenging to do well. 

 out of the MIT Media Lab wrote this great book called 

. In it, he looks at the roots of transmedia in fan culture around things like 

 — in particular, the way these large, interconnected universes that have some presence in popular culture end up having more appeal because their fans can connect the dots, and invest not just in individual chapters of the story but the larger mythology as a whole.

That's not exactly the most radical idea per se. It's what franchises and sequels do, to varying degrees of success. It's just that we live in a society now where these stories can be much bigger than just franchises and sequels, and can have a presence in many different ways. But that creates a much bigger challenge from a worldbuilding standpoint, because if you don't have a unifying logic for all these different strands it gets problematic.

Everything at EDGLRD takes place in the same world, at least in terms of the studio aesthetic. We're not trying to build a giant mythology because the more complex these things get the more likely people tune out. And it's less satisfying, both creatively because you have to follow these really strict rules and from an audience standpoint. That's why Marvel fatigue, and superhero fatigue more generally, is settling in now. There are teenagers who hadn't been born yet when the first 

 movie came out, so it's hard to try to get a teenager today invested in the MCU. Those audiences are not interested in that kind of work. The important thing with worldbuilding now is to understand that the world has to be satisfying through different access points, and it can't be dense with information.

: When you think about the unifying thread within EDGLRD, would you consider that to be mainly aesthetic?

: It's also thematic. In time, there may be interconnected narrative strands, but I also think audiences appreciate the mystery and opportunity to connect the dots on their own. You look at what's going on with 

 and Jordan Peele. There are theories online that all three Jordan Peele movies are part of this larger Monkeypaw universe. He certainly hasn't stepped out and explained that, but it doesn't matter to those audiences. With 

, we had this show, paintings and some video work, at Hauser & Wirth. That was before most of the public could see the movie. We had masks that were unveiled on a red carpet and at a press conference and had been making appearances in all these different places, and people are seeing them, whether they're seeing them live or they're seeing records of them in the media. That, to me, is as legitimate an access point to the world of 

, to the aesthetic, but also to these themes of masculine rage within these digital worlds that impinge on the real one, as sitting and watching an eighty-minute feature. We had this art opening so anyone in LA, for months, could go and step into the world of 

 without seeing the movie and feeling like they knew 

: Do you consider this holistic worldbuilding to be a form of auteurship, or is it more a nuanced take on fan service?

: We aren't in the business of fan service. We're not giving people what they expect. We're giving people something they've never seen before, and that's what makes it exciting. That's also what makes the greatest auteurs worth following from one work to the next. It's not just about what's predictably great. It's about the unpredictability of a precise creative vision.

: Through EDGLRD, we've seen already that the experiential component is an intrinsic element of your strategy, at least so far. Is this a response in particular to how people are consuming media these days?

: Of course it is. You don't show a movie in a strip club under the assumption that people only want experiences in movie theaters. We did show 

 in a movie theater the same week in LA that it played at Crazy Girls, with screenings hosted by the American Cinematheque, and those went really well. But I do feel that if we lean too heavily on that experience, we'd be missing out on a core aspect of the worldbuilding inherent to this movie and inherent to EDGLRD itself. When we do DJ sets, what we're really offering is an immersive experience in disguise. You're seeing something, a work of performance art by Harmony Korine, with people wearing masks and the actors who he's cast to stand around him. But the multichannel element of it is also something that EDGLRD has created as well. You're seeing EDGLRD visuals, some of them tied to other projects that we're working on, including our first skate video and the 

The potential for flexibility in distribution is exciting, but most companies are not set up to work that way. We haven't seen a lot of innovation in film distribution for decades, and a large part of that is because the birth of the American independent film world and the market around it is not that old, and a lot of the people who were involved in doing that are still doing that. Until there is some real changeover, both generationally and in terms of the companies that are doing these things, you're going to see a lot of attempts to make the old model work, and it doesn't always make sense.

We're seeing some interesting new experimentation around distribution, wherein people retain ownership of their work, and they partner with exhibitors to get the work out there, and then essentially it's on them to get the audience to show up. But, if the work is good enough, the audience shows up. By and large, people are still chasing distribution deals that underserve the work. What we're trying to do is keep the audience in mind every step of the way, whether that audience is best served at home or at a unique experience we've created for them.

: It seems a bit paradoxical. On one hand, viewing a movie like 

 in an experiential setting resists the idea of easy access and on-demand content. But, at the same time, you're also creating a certain set of distractions to contextualize the consumption of the film. What's your relationship to content?

: We can play with business terminology when it suits our needs, but we aren't a content company in the sense that we just want to crank out a bunch of stuff. Scorsese has been really harsh on the idea of content being used to talk about cinema because cinema is not something that benefits from those kinds of pressures, and I think he's right. But we do want to figure out where audiences are, and also determine the best kind of work to get their attention. People who are essentially having multi-channel experiences at home, by virtue of TikTok and the TV being on at the same time, should probably benefit from works of art that are attuned to those needs.

 is very much a strong theatrical experience, and one that can also work from an exhibition standpoint more exclusively, like in an art gallery or a strip club, if you watch it at home with your phone out you might still be able to have a compelling experience because it's so visual, and less narrative-oriented. I'm not saying that we only want to make work that functions in that setting, but it's something to be cognizant of and to be open to: the idea that a passive viewer who's not paying attention all the time is still a viewer you should take seriously. I want to lean into radical acceptance of new paradigms. How can someone like me, a committed cinephile who saw 

 as a teenager and decided that movies were my calling, remain open to the idea that audiences are constantly changing and their receptiveness to different kinds of experiences is acceptable? It's a choice.

: Here's a more philosophical question. We've got three words for you: art, film, entertainment. Are these concepts separate or inextricable from each other?

: I'm a firm believer in the Trojan horse approach. You can create art that can operate under the guise of entertainment. I'm most invested in this question of how we create art that can somehow have a broader appeal without being limited by the expectations that are placed on entertainment.

: What does your audience look like thus far? Who is the typical fervent supporter of EDGLRD?

: There are so many different kinds of people inspired by the work that we're doing because it's designed to provoke strong reactions, and people like to be jolted out of complacency. I see a lot of younger people, but also people across generations, because, with Harmony — who is now in his fifties and has been making work for thirty years — you have several generations that have come up with it. But teenagers feel excited by the work we're doing because it doesn't require some sort of ivory tower in order to gain entry to it. The fact that we're playing in the skateboard arena is really exciting because there are young people today who can rattle off all of the exciting skaters and have no idea who Keanu Reeves is. It’s a discreet star system.

: You've said you're an optimist. Do you have one big prediction for where you see the industry going?

: It's amazing that we've gone this whole time and haven't talked once about AI. This isn't Web3, this isn't NFT, it's not crypto. It's absolutely the practical result of decades of machine learning research rapidly coming to fruition, and it will change everything about how stories are told. ChatGPT and Sora are getting all these headlines, but there are so many amazing kinds of projects around LLMs going on right now that I think will empower artists in a major way, and also create more avenues for people to experiment creatively who otherwise might not even try. It’s a new chapter in the history of artmaking. Again, going back to this idea of not shying away from radical shifts in our society, I think there's something really, really promising about the future of art with this acceleration of technology. Now, there are also a lot of scary components going on there, and this information could have seriously destructive effects on our society. But if we're not raging against the dying of the light, what are we even doing here? Embrace the risk.

Adam Abdalla

Eric Kohn

On Art and Entertainment

We asked people in, from, or intimately connected with the LA art scene to describe the city in one work of art. Here's what they said:

Recorded in 1974 in a garage studio near Point Dume, Neil Young's 

 is breezy and heavy, dumb and smart, irreverent and sincere. It's an energy that pulls in all different directions. Young described Zuma in an interview from ’75 as "a lost sort of form, sort of a soul-form that switches from history scene to history scene trying to find itself.” I can't think of a better way to describe this city.

Duchamp Playing Chess with a Nude (Eve Babitz)

] represents the spirit of LA, the contrast between high and low. Duchamp at his retrospective winning chess games next to the ultimate symbol of Hollywood, a busty enigmatic Nude. The reveal that it is Eve Babitz offers up so much more than a body, the voice of her zeitgeist, and the fun literary spirit of LA's intelligentsia, confronting this older art dude, who was the rebellious voice of his own generation. It's almost a passing of the baton. Shot days after Duchamp's opening, this was all to get revenge on her married lover, the curator Walter Hopps, who didn't invite her to the opening... A very LA thing to do. She might have lost the chess game, but she essentially came out on top.

Immediately I thought of what used to be called "Encounters" and is now referred to as "Theme Building".

"Theme Building," the space-age structure situated between terminals at LAX that you might notice while standing outside waiting for an Uber, is quintessential LA. For decades it housed a restaurant, Encounters, that felt straight out of a live-action Jetsons movie. In the days when people picked people up from the airport, there was no better place to kill time, have a drink, and watch planes come and go, all while wondering if what you were sitting in was a swanky bar, a covert meeting place for shadowy business deals, a set for movies set in the distant future, or is ever the case in Los Angeles, some combination of the three.

 is the artwork that defined a big part of Los Angeles in my memory and imagination. It was an illuminated marker of Asian-American pride hanging proudly in the center of Little Tokyo. Generations of Chinese and Japanese Americans gathered there for almost sixty years, whether to celebrate weddings or birthdays or mourn the passing of loved ones. Following the arrow below, the glowing words “CHOP SUEY” led you into a timeless sanctuary and safe space, where diasporas entangled as wonderfully as the food that was served.

I really like this image by Joey Terrill that was recently in 

. Joey also has a show up through the end of the month [

] at Marc Selwyn Fine Art. I haven't seen too many paintings of Melrose, where I would ride my bike back and forth as a child. I feel like peak Melrose was such a vibe, around Von Dutch, Coffee Bean Ice Blended drinks, and Aardvarks. I love the flatness of the image with the texture of the lines and the color palette. This painting is quintessential Los Angeles to me. In the picture, we have the power lines, the bus stop, the edge of a parking sign, and of course, the protagonist in an open vest because what do we have in LA if not for the good weather. There is a roughness to Los Angeles that has been captured so well in this image, with the subtle details and that low horizon of single-floor buildings—always a blue sky just above a facade or overhang.

My father was born in Boyle Heights, inside his childhood home on Lanfranco Street, in the summer of 1942. “Filling Up on Ancient Energies” was painted on a cinderblock wall at a Shell Gas station in Boyle Heights in 1980, the same year I was born. Unfortunately, eight years later, it was demolished. Thirteen or fourteen years thereafter, I found myself assisting 

Wayne Healy and David Botello of the East Los Streetscapers

 in their El Monte studio, painting their Santa Monica mural. This piece encapsulates numerous dynamic facets of Los Angeles that resonate with me: the interplay between present and past, Indigeneity, family, community, LA cruising culture, and much more. These things are deeply familiar to me. As the city undergoes transformation, we recognize the irreplaceable nature of these magnificent painted tapestries scattered across Los Angeles. Even in the absence of the mural (a small piece still exists), the act of its destruction sparked outrage and inspired many artists, myself included.

Theodora Allen

Sebastian Gladstone

Glenn Kaino

Patrick Martinez

BJ Panda Bear

Tif Sigfrids

…And of course, the protagonist in an open vest, because what do we have in LA if not good weather.

LA in One Work of Art

I once wrote that Los Angeles gives me this feeling that I am perpetually on the edge of town. Never arriving. That, no matter which direction I drive, I never can decide if I am coming or if I am going.

I am supposed to stay in a friend's apartment for the next couple of weeks—the friend, a translator, is in Hong Kong doing research for his PhD on photorealist paintings and contemporary agency in post-Mao China. I arrive at the tail end of an 

atmospheric river—long, narrow regions in the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics.

 There has also been indoor flooding. The rug, wall to wall, is wet. Mold takes hold. I will need to find myself a permanent temporary situation.

I find myself at a Thai restaurant in a Hollywood strip mall, where a man I have just met interprets the word autofiction as writing about cars. He tells me he loves cars. What kind of cars did I write about? Well, I 

 Saabs. I also love morning glory, he says, as he lays some morning glory down onto his tongue.

I find myself at the farmers market in Hollywood on a Sunday, and I run into a man I know. When I ask him what he is doing on Friday night, he says he is going to his friend's wedding in San Antonio, that his friend is marrying herself. That the friend has a new boyfriend who is going to be in attendance. That he is here to buy kimchi, quail eggs, and lilies.

I find myself in a last-minute apartment beneath the home of a librarian who inherited the house of his previous lover, a master gardener who had inherited the house from his previous lover, the author of 

, the novel, later the motion picture, who killed himself in the home after learning he had AIDS. The librarian lives there now with his new lover, a much younger man from Japan. The librarian tells me that Anaïs Nin spent time in the home as well as Marlene Dietrich, Edward Albee. I find inscriptions from Nin in several books I pull out of the shelf: 

Winter of Artifice, The Practical Life Of Anabolic Steroids

Taste Of India, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul.

 she writes to the novelist: “your scented dreams are so complete your net must be magnetic.” I find myself reading that 

at the time of the publication, which took place at around the same time that Nin was having an incestuous relationship with her father, some members of the Nin family who knew about the incestuous relationship were "horrified" to know that Nin was writing a book with this title. That they assumed that the book was going to be an exposé on the father/daughter incestuous relationship

I find myself at a dinner at a Lebanese restaurant, also in a strip mall where the host never comes and everyone collectively—all ten guests—decides not to drink. Ten Mint teas.

I find that in one week, I have met three body doubles in passing; That body doubles like talking to strangers.

I find that several women have used the word diarrhea in the last several days—to brag. I find myself thinking of someone who I am certain is not thinking of me. I find several people have brought up the full moon and how it has made them feel different. I find myself seeing Aimee Mann at the Starbucks in Los Feliz doing a crossword puzzle wearing a very small scarf.

I find myself covered in turmeric stains from a source unknown, having not come into intentional contact with any turmeric at all. That yellow: light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575–585 nm. I find myself understanding it as particulate matter, native to the region. I find myself noticing the hummingbirds.

I find myself searching for car keys in a planter in front of the wrong home and then missing a Vietnam War-themed 50th Birthday Party of an artist. Dimensions variable.

I find myself in Topanga at 5:30 pm with an unusually high tide and more driftwood than the man sitting next to me, on a beach towel that says Jerusalem, has ever seen. The atmospheric river... I find a piece of wood in the shape of an ear. I take it with me, as well as several others with indiscriminate forms. In the car driving home, a colony of sand flies emerges from the wood, forms a chorus line, and temporarily infests the car.

I find myself hearing a man in line say on the phone that fermentation comes at a cost. I find myself in another line next to a man on the phone describing a real estate deal as extremely sexy. I find myself not feeling comfortable taking left turns, hesitant to change lanes, and being asked by my various passengers if I would just let them drive. I find myself learning the smell of rotting citrus. I find myself noticing that all the fruit seemed to fall last week—mass grave. That it's the Angelino rats' favorite time of year–

I find myself driving the boyfriend of a friend's friend, who I have just met, to Tom of Finland's House. I ask where he is visiting from, and he says New York but that he's only lived there a year. That it's nice to be in Los Angeles because something about it reminds him of Ramallah, where he is from. That he is working on a performance piece about a 9th-century inventor—Lightness and Darkness, the strings of the oud, ways of discussing seasons, temperature, mood. That his visa says

. That he appreciates all of the driftwood in my car. That he's trying to reach FedEx to track a lost package and might need to take the call on the ride to Tom of Finland's.

I find myself talking to someone who says that degeneracy is holistic in LA. I find myself on one day believing I could live a really nice life here and the next thinking I need to leave as soon as possible and someone saying in reply that the sort of bipolar LA experience is 

—that one day it's the best place there is, and the next is the darkest of your life. It's situational.

I find myself eating a tri-tip steak walking around a man-made body of water with a disparaging vegan who is directly in the middle of a broken heart saying that God is very quiet sometimes. I find myself being invited on several intentional walks without destinations—“loops.”

I find myself in tears about nothing pinpoint-able driving up N Crescent. I find myself elated about nothing pinpoint-able driving down Laurel Canyon the next hour. I find myself canceling and being canceled on.

I find myself at an imitation diner, where, over pancakes, three artists discuss their hatred of another artist. One, a lesbian, says she likes all women except 

I find myself waist-deep in water colder than I'd drink on the trail to Eaton Canyon Falls, heavy from last week's rain.

I find myself speaking to a doctor, a man much older than me, who tells me that his late father was also once a doctor at Cedars. That he had been a particular golden age movie star's doctor. That when she needed her appendix removed, they told her they were also taking the ovaries. That she put a note on her gown that said please not to take her woman-parts because she wanted a son just like the doctor’s handsome little son. The man I’m speaking to well up with tears, and I realize he is speaking about himself. That he is 

I find myself receiving a message from the artist who I drove to Tom of Findlands asking for my email address and a photograph of driftwood. He tells me he's interested in reading my books, that he has hearing issues from his military time as a bodyguard with Arafat.

I find myself ordering a book I've wanted to read to the nearest bookstore, nine miles away. I find myself deciding to drive to Malibu and turning around ten minutes into the drive.

I find myself at another dinner, this one at a home, where no one drinks anything again but eats an assortment of red and black berries after the meal in front of a fire, where a man who arrives after the dinner with a very uninhibited black dog whose tail immediately takes down a vase rattles off the astrological signs of all US presidents.

 He says Libras have despotic tendencies:

. And when asked about the risings and moons, he also provides. 

Abraham Lincoln, Sun in Aquarius, Moon in Capricorn, Ascendant in Aquarius

I find myself at a self-identifying New York-style Sichuan Chinese restaurant and while inside forget that I am in Los Angeles.

I find myself referring to a coyote as a hyena. I find myself very slightly nauseous after a large and incredible Ceviche. I find myself not understanding the physics of a situation. I find myself at a gallery on top of a hill advertised as a mountain.

I find myself near the Roosevelt Hotel around noon, walking to the public parking lot behind a late-night show and thinking I'm hearing Sheryl Crow’s sound check and a security guard telling me that it's Sheryl Crow’s sound check.

I find myself reading that Nin's use of the word incest is, in this instance

 not literal. In other words, in this book the word "incest" describes a selfish love where one can appreciate in another only that which is similar to oneself. One is then only loving oneself, shunning all differences. At first, such self-love can seem ideal because it is without fear and without risk. But eventually it becomes a sterile nightmare. Toward the end of the book, the character called "the modern Christ" puts Nin's use of the word into context: “If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other."

I find that on my way to the airport, I really do feel I am actually just about to arrive in Los Angeles.

Eliza Barry Callahan

I find myself at a Thai restaurant in a Hollywood strip mall, where a man I have just met interprets the word autofiction as writing about cars. He tells me he loves cars.

"Loops"

In the early days of the Internet, before Soundcloud and Bandcamp, kids would swap burned CDs and design covers to slip in their jewel cases: handmade objects curated and shared with care. Music was harder to access then—you couldn't just drop a link to a track. Before the corporatized platforms of the internet today, DIY scenes built their own channels around blogs, email lists, message boards, and self-hosted sites — producing a rich network of collaboration that you would only find if you were looking for it. As the musicians and coders Eric Farber and Mike Pollard, who co-created the new music streaming platform 

, put it: “The network of music was as important as the act of making it.”

The rise of social media and music-sharing platforms has provided new interfaces for making and sharing music, offering new entryways into scenes and creating a constellation of possibilities for building brands and audiences. In some ways, the intimacy and interdependence from earlier years have faded from prominence—yet, the founders of Nina believe that a digital space that channels these networks of music is possible.

For Discovery, Farber and Pollard spoke with journalist Ezra Marcus about these networks of creators and consumers, “authenticity,” and more, reflecting on Nina's roots and the past and future of the Internet.

So I feel like there's been a point, maybe ten-plus years, where a social media vibe is part of the art, part of the performance.

If you're an artist of any kind, you have to make people care about what you do, and it's interesting to observe that playing out in real time.

Anything that has reached visibility or awareness is because some people cared and made more people care. The role of a curator historically has been to identify what is important to them and then translate that “why” to the world.

There's a whole spectrum of posting frequency that people choose or the amount of themselves that they're willing to share, and all along it, there are different ways to make people care about what they're doing. Making good music is one way, but it's not the only way.

 that's different about how they're approaching that problem?

I think if you're doing something, whether that's making music or art or you're getting on stage, you are not detached from the spotlight that also exists through social media.

Shed Theory and bar italia are two acts at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how they engage. Shed Theory shares a ton of content, and you can always see what they're doing. They're building lore. And you see the opposite end of that spectrum is an act like bar italia; there are no pictures of them, they're not online. Mysterious on purpose. But still, it's just negative space functioning in the same system.

I don't think that anyone on either side of that spectrum is being cautious or withholding on purpose. They're just doing what feels natural to them. Yes, you have to engage with this system one way or another, but ultimately you have to be yourself in being this thing that's presented to the world. It's about creating this idea of “The Total Artist.”

Where does actually putting songs out fit into it?

I feel like there's a thing now, and with the Shed Theory people, it feels like the music is both the final and not the final product. That's almost like the bait that pulls you into their universe, but it's kind of this cyclical thing, like a chicken or the egg scenario, like you listen to the music, you hear it, you go fuck with them online, you continue to fuck with them online, and then you listen to more of the music which is kind of an ideal situation as an artist.

That system is also a deeper kind of bait because it can pull new people in, new collaborators, new producers, so it's a way to expand that world.

How much of it is about parasocial dynamics, where the fans feel like they know all these people in real life?

With the Internet, the parasocial always seems important, right? The Internet makes everything feel pretty close.

And I don't even necessarily think that this is a new thing, we just have a lot more of it now. Take Beatlemania and fans buying magazines and keeping up and getting all the facts that they can about an artist; it's been happening for decades. The difference is that we just have a lot more information now, so the audiences feel para-socially closer.

Good art should do two things: make people want to make art or make people want to stop making art. And then, sometimes, even bad art can provoke you into making something totally different because you think it sucks and you can do better.

Fitting into that, I would love to think that what we're doing with Nina makes people want to do more. Like when 

 told us a couple of years ago that having this new place to put music was inspiring him to make new shit.

Part of it is that if you just want to release something straight to a Nina type of platform, it's maybe because you don't need the label to interface you with the radio or whatever there is this whole new self-driven ecosystem for promotion.

The user-generated music model is what really shook up the traditional album release cycle. The fact that you can meet up with someone in a night, record a track, and have it live in seconds after you finish recording it or mastering it or whatever is probably not something that the suits in the record industry have fully come to terms with.

They understand these platforms as a way of identifying talent that they can then try to put through their machine, but I would hope that there are ways for people to make it through without having to enter into that machine. Something like SoundCloud definitely did that to gain awareness and get people's attention, getting something out there that could go viral, but it doesn't completely close the loop.

The way that some people play their practice or their career on the Internet, some people move really fluidly through Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and SoundCloud. They understand every website as the medium that it is, and they're good at it.

And what's different about being a fan now is you're not waiting to go to the record store and buy a Rolling Stones record and come home and listen to the same 10 songs over and over for two years. You're constantly engaging as much as you want to.

Without a strong record music industry, maybe the role of a musician is viewed differently. People don't want the Rolling Stones' career anymore; they want something that probably involves everything from producing a movie to acting or who knows what.

It's like the industry is saying you have to do all these things to make it. It might just be that the lack of strength of the industry makes it so that these kinds of multifaceted careers are just what make more sense right now.

Right, it's like, people who are making music now, on the one hand, have had access to all of music in an un-genre-fied way. So you don't have to be like, “Okay, I'm a goth kid now,” because music is hard to come by and records are hard to come by, so you invest in that, and for whatever reason, it becomes your identity. Now you can be like, “I'm goth today,” or “I'm goth on this song,” but on the next song, “I'm Neil Young,” or “I'm Mazzy Star,” or whatever.

We haven't had a chance to even see what that means yet because we have a lot of people like us, 35-year-old people, who still remember all the different silos in high school, all the identities you could be, though you couldn't be three of them publicly. Or maybe you secretly had some friends who went across those boundaries, but it wasn't like just a big fuck fest of music or something.

What we're starting to get at is there's this big beautiful fuck fest of all of cultural history working at once, and the kind of things that resonate that come back are pretty interesting and funny.

I think one thing you get a lot from people our age or especially the older boomer mindset is “the kids will never understand what it was like to belong to a subculture,” like they used to mean something. And yeah, I'm sure being fucking goth in the 80s was insane, but the position, the feeling I think, is still there with how a teenager feels about Shed Theory, they still feel that, they're drawing that on their Converse, and buying t-shirts and wearing them in class, and it still means something to them. So the question is, how could it, on the one hand, be totally non-siloed but still have that alt resonance?

I think that there's something high schoolers have access to now, where the nature of having social media profiles allows you to be really fluid.  You can be like, “Here's my pop project,” and then you can just spin up another Instagram and you're like, “Here's my rap project.” With the 

 stuff, I don't know if this was as accessible for people before, and that's why you had to plant your stake in the ground, being like, “I'm a punk, “I'm a goth, “I'm a jock,” and so on.

All these things that we are talking about are good developments, and it's because of the Internet. Regardless of the bad parts of the Internet, you have to imagine that there is a way to take this thing that's done a lot of good and make it do more.

Yeah, like Eric, what you're saying about these side projects, I feel like a big shift in the millennial approach to the Internet is like, “I need as many followers as possible on whatever thing I'm doing, I'm promoting myself by getting famous,” and the new thing is like, “I need to have as few followers as possible, and I need someone to not know if that's me, or be unsure about it but still interested in it, and trying to decipher like “is that jonatan leandoer96,” “is that Yung Lean,” that kind of thing that's almost more powerful now than like “I have one million followers on Instagram that are all fake, because I'm you know some fake Machine Gun Kelly-style guy from LA.”

Well, at a certain point, don't all followers become fake? There's just a certain threshold where it's like, how many of those people can really like you?

We're in a post-metrics era now where everyone went too ham, and then it got too productized, and now it's cool to be niche and obscure. It's a return to people actually interacting with or being interested in things rather than just engaging. Or at least that's kind of the optimistic angle on the internet, and that's what we're trying to do with Nina, which is encouraging that shift.

There was this show that Dolan and I tried to go to, 

. When I got into the line, it was already probably 500 people long, around the block, and these high school girls got in the line behind me, and then a girl who was walking past asked the girls behind me what they were in line for, and the high school girls said “Oh you wouldn't know what it is, it's underground.” and I just thought it was so funny because now we can have this thing where you have a sea of kids in the line but then also say “You wouldn't know, it's underground.” Is there an above-ground underground or something?

I feel like I read some articles about the idea that the questions that we all grew up with around “Is x, y and z authentic?” were a total trap, and now it's such a red herring that we have what you're saying, this kind of permanent access to all of culture. There has to be a new way forward that doesn't revolve around “This person's a real shoegazer because he's from Seattle,” or whatever. What do you think is the right approach there?

It's good to not care and I also feel like the conversation that used to exist about bands selling out and stuff doesn't exist anymore, and I think that it was a negative thing when it existed. That was some weird Gen X-inherited thing where people are mad at someone when they sell out and you just start to be socialized to behave that way but you don't really care or know what it means.

 songs they're making now. These 18-year-olds: they're not playing in bands, they're just making them in 

, but it sounds legit and they're obviously doing a pastiche, but that's cool. It sounds good, it sounds like they're carrying something forward even if they're not breaking any new ground per se, but that doesn't really need to be the issue anymore.

There are probably steps forward being made, and I know people use monoculture as a buzzword, but I feel like it's actually that people have 

 much access to the historical archive  that there are way less boundaries than there ever have been before, where it's cool if you're making Shoegaze in 2024, and maybe 15 years from now that era will have a name and it will be authentic.

Music rocks and music has this really cool built-in feature where if you don't like it, there's a whole suite of buttons you can press to make different music come on.

Mike Pollard

Eric Farber

Ezra Marcus

Good art should do two things: make people want to make art or make people want to stop making art.

A Deeper Kind of Bait: Nina and the Creation of a New Music Platform

Issue 4

Of all the places to introduce an issue exploring the shifting lines between art and entertainment, we found the best: cabana-side at the Hollywood Roosevelt, overlooking a pool painted by David Hockney. As vacationers ply its heated waters and dealers wrap another successful Felix LA fair, we pan north, across the Walk of Stars to the Dolby Theatre—the home of the Academy Awards.

Our work has taken us from biennials to curatorial summits to wrestling rings, so an issue of 

 dedicated to art and entertainment was inevitable. And what better establishing shot for such an issue than Los Angeles?

Ground zero for pop culture, the city has long been home to the avant-garde, from Frankfurt School émigrés to Darby Crash to Semiotext(e). Everywhere, the boundaries between art and entertainment, culture and content, shift constantly. In LA especially the ground is always moving, tectonic tendencies notwithstanding.

And so, as LA Art Week fades into the Oscars, we present 

Join us as we careen around town with novelist Eliza Barry Callahan (whose novel 

 is out this week to critical acclaim). Along the way, we ask some of our favorite Angelenos, whether born, raised, or transplanted, about the work of art they feel captures something special about the city.

And knowing that what happens in LA certainly does not stay there, we present two conversations on cultural dissemination. Cultural Counsel founder Adam Abdalla and Eric Kohn, Head of Film Strategy and Development at 

, chat transmedia, worldbuilding, and distribution (cinematic and otherwise).

Back in New York, far from the shadow of the Capitol Records Tower, Eric Farber and Mike Pollard of 

Letter from the Editor