Welcome to Caribbean Rhythms, episode 206. I am a guest show today honored to have Stefan Rautenbeek. Stefan, I don't know if I pronounce your barbaric Nordic name correct, but Stefan is a filmmaker, provocateur artist from country Holland, Netherlands, like a flying Dutchman, But he quite well-known and notorious even in Netherlands and Europe and becoming increasingly so United States for a series of quite avant-garde humor movies. I call them humor movies. I hope you don't mind Stefan. And yes, my pleasure to have Stefan of Kirak keeping it real art critics. of what his art collective is known of which he somewhat a cultic leader I even I say but welcome to Caribbean rhythms Stefan. Thank you so much it's an honor. No the honor is mine but

please tell audience a little bit especially my listeners in United States and maybe Japan's and such not completely familiar with your tactics let me put your tactics what what What kinds of things do you do? What are? Yes, I mean, it started out, I was an artist in Berlin, I was making photographs that will be hanging in gallery walls and rich people would buy them. And at a certain moment, I took a camera and started filming the art world that I was operating in the relationship with art collectors, curators, and of course, this world was increasingly becoming more, let's say, woke or more obsessed with the Anthropocene and these sort of these sort of ideas and things started escalating and I think I basically filmed this adventure of this

whole liberal art world collapsing and then it became increasingly fictional so we started to do interventions performances we moved away from the art world entirely started to do different things it's sort of cultural adventure movies yes Stefan I did not know this so you started out as basically an avant-garde photographer, and around when did you notice the increasing collapse of this art world, art dealership world, around what year more or less would you say? I think post 9-11 when things started escalating in Iraq, when you had this sort of problem with how the west perceived itself, I think that was a moment when curators and art museums became more panicky and sort of doubled down on leftist thought.

I mean, it was always there in the art world. Of course, it's a completely left-wing world. The entire 20th century is saturated with left-wing culture. But I was always able to navigate around it by playing language games with people, by fooling people. It became more aggressive in a way. Yes, I want, I'm glad you mentioned this because I see quite amazing things sometimes online now on Twitter, X, whatever, especially claims that Woke is so much worse and not even so much worse, but that it didn't really exist before George Floyd. And I see amazing, to me, insane nostalgia for the early 2000s or for the say 2000 to 2010, which I remember as extreme repressive time, not much different from what is now. So I'm very glad you mentioned this. It's even through, I think, 1990s,

it was so-called political correctness quite bad in the United States, and really hammering the art world, the academic world, and anything to do with, let's say, cultural production, literary production, completely hammered well before let's say 2020 and I think uh would you say though that it accelerated post 2012 in United States it seemed to pick up around then whether it was partly because of internet uh provision of general culture or the insanities of let's say Obama second semester I wouldn't know because I was in Europe but I think what I noticed is that when the curators became female, so the females were replaced by males, and for example the art academy where I was studying got like a female director, stuff like that. That's when stuff really changed,

because of course the men, they had all these ridiculous left-wing ideas, but they were still sleeping with their students. It was still an orgy in the art academy and in the museums, and then it became sterile and feminine, and then a project of mine was cancelled in 2012, 12 for being too pornographic and that's sort of where i noticed the shift yes it's i think it's because of the women yes this uh much uh underestimated uh i'm glad gets um a little bit more commentary lately uh more attention from even mainstream conservatives the the woman question but listen that's for another time you you must uh spend maybe more time in the united States to see how, I hope maybe one day you make a movie about this, how actually conservative

movement, intellectual movement, political movement in the United States completely under thumb of quite bossy women for quite a long time. But that's another topic, Stefan. I wanted to very quick address this matter of Michelle Wellebeck. If people know any modern literary figure, it would be Welbeck. He by far, I think, especially center right leaning people, by far best known modern novelist. I've enjoyed many of his novels myself. Now a lot of people have heard of your controversy with Welbeck and Welbeck this, Welbeck versus Kirak and the project that you did recently and I won't say anything more I have my own thoughts about that but would you mind telling audience what happened with you and Wellebeg the whole

thing you know. I proposed to do something very polite with him would you please take the train to Holland and then I will organize an event to honor you as the writer that influenced my work and then they saw our film honeypots him and his wife and they basically did a counter proposal which is let's do a sequel to the honeypot film yes and he had this idea that he was smoking too much and the only moment where he would not smoke is when he had sex so this would be a sort of comical way of addressing his mortality like I need to have sex with these groupies and it's It's becoming increasingly difficult for him to to have sex with these groupies because they don't show up I think because 20 year olds are no longer reading him. So Gen Z is not really Michel Welbeck's books

Therefore they don't offer their bodies Yeah But I'm of course a great fan of Michel Welbeck and I cannot really offer my body to him because he's not gay and he Doesn't you know find me attractive So but I have many women in my art collective who would do everything for me and my films So I said to him, I'm in a monogamous relationship with my wife, but I can maybe ask these beautiful women, would you sleep with Michel Welbeck because he is my hero? Would you sleep with my forefather, my god, basically? And they gladly agreed. Your intellectual godfather, I love Michel Welbeck books also. Sorry to interrupt just for audience knowledge tangent of what books of Willoughbeck would you say are your favorite? I really liked atomized or elementary particles. Of course, everyone likes this.

And I liked the map and the territory, which seems many people not like. And I especially enjoyed his first book, translated as, I think, whatever in English, Extensión do Domaine de la Lute, where extension of the domain of the struggle or the fight, fight where there is beautiful image of this man who masturbates to images of a fat woman eating cake, I think, if I'm not confusing books. I like, I mean, Wellebeck is great. In some sense, you do this too. A great lover of modern dirt and degradation and not flinch from showing it. What books of Wellebeck's would you share, some of your favorites? I'm so happy that we share the taste for the books because I think Welbeck was really powerful when he focused on sex and quantum mechanics and sort of atomization in its most literal

and also sort of sociological sense. And I don't like his later books like Summation, Submission. The more political books seemed a little bit like plot driven to me based on a concept on an idea. I didn't like them so much. But these passionate books about sex, his younger books. I think they're amazing. Yes, I like very much Willoughbyck. He tried to be somehow an heir of jaded, European, dirt-loving authors like Céline. But this may be topic for another time. But look, Stefan, I hope you don't mind we go on tangents. This just come to mind now, we're just having friendly talk. Do you have opinions on the breakdown, as I see it, of the modern novel as an art form? because I like reading Wellerbeck for the reasons you just said, but Wellerbeck almost never moved me

the same way that Céline does, or I just reread Red and the Black by Stendhal. I'm refinishing it for the umpteenth time, and I talk recently on my show about Sentimental Education by Flaubert, where ending hit you like truck. It still moves me if I think of it. No modern author, including Welbeck, moves me. I don't know. Do you have an opinion on? No, I mean, I agree with you. So definitely Stendhal or Red and Black, it's on another level. I think Michel Welbeck is maybe a bit timely. What's very important to me is the way he structured his book. So atomized, the way he basically sets it up as a sci-fi novel in contemporary sociology. yes was to me very inspiring yes um but but i think psychologically he's lacking um and he also

reflects on that in his essays like he says i'm unable to write with any psychological depth like balzac or standalwood simply because i'm a product of this sort of liberal atomized society yeah i don't know anyone who can frankly i don't know any author everyone has this glossy journalistic You know, maybe if I tried novels, I'd have that too, I don't know. Yes, maybe. I don't know. Like, I wouldn't generalize it like that, but I think the sort of superficial psychological quality of Michel Welbeck is sort of what characterizes him. I think I enjoyed the Welbeck books for their structure also a lot. Like, I also enjoy Mozart for his structure, like the way he sets up these symphonies, the games he plays with form. I think Welbeck is an amazing pastiche artist in a way.

And there's also this thing of like what use it is to compare Stendhal to Welbeck. Stendhal is already written. We can still read him, we can still read Dostoevsky. So is it really a problem that the books that are written in the 20th century don't have the same quality than books before? I don't know. I do think there's something lacking because modern movies do move me a lot. but it's just the modern novel somehow doesn't capture the spirit of now or something. It's that topic for another time though, Stefan. I actually think this is a very important topic and it's part of why I started shaping my new art form because I believe that it's very difficult now to become a great painter because the urgency, the need to paint was there in the times of Velázquez, in the times of Rembrandt.

And the same with the novel. It's like it's a medium very good for the 19th, 18th century. And of course now the urgency is moving away from that. You can record documentary style, voice, podcast, all these things. So it's only natural that our entire mind, our mental model veers towards these more sort of other art forms. And in a way I think my competition with Welbeck, the lawsuits, all these things have to do also with the fact that the novel in a way is a medium I'm struggling for legitimacy currently, so in court Misha Welbeck argues that I'm just a pornographer, I'm not an artist, I'm just there to fuck stuff up, my artwork should not exist, he writes a book about that I'm not an artist, I'm just a moron.

But explain to audience what happened, why end up Welbeck suing you in this famous case in Europe now? I think there are many reasons for it, one of it was the language barrier, maybe cultural, the French are in a way very polite and I of course have this sort of crude Rembrandt quality when I'm when I'm filming but we were working already together for like two and a half months I think his wife got jealous with with Isa one of the girls in the film so she started making Lisa started making difficulties and I also think that Welbeck likes, he's very volatile, he likes, he likes a good lawsuit, you know, it's good energy for him. But the legal basis of why he's suing you is basically just for audience clarification.

Basically you filmed him having sex-ores with some of your girls and then Wellebeck went back on it and said that he doesn't agree with you releasing this footage anymore, correct? that because it's showing him having sex this bad and he has the right to the material and so on. Is that roughly what the issue is? He came up with I think 50 different arguments and also his book is very, he goes at it from different sides. I don't think he has a real reason for it. I think because he also specifically says I have no problem with porn whatsoever because I'm not a prude. I think if you look at everything he says the thing that's you know strikes me the most is basically that he says I want to be the one who's making artworks about my life

and the things I see in my life and I don't want somebody else making an artwork about what he sees when he looks at me. His anger started when I released the trailer and the trailer doesn't just show Velbeck in bed with a girl it also shows my wife giving birth to our second son so I'm sort of placing this whole thing in a larger context of me trying to have this family life him also trying to make something wholesome out of out of his situation with the groupies and his wife he doesn't like me sort of competing with him over this pastiche quality yes honestly I think it's about that it's really about him not allowing other artists. I understand. When you say pastiche quality, I should second that I also great enjoy in his book the kind

of innovations, you know, the asides, as you say, science fiction, the science asides in elementary particles, and in The Map and the Territory, as in his other book, he does kind of product review asides. It has a strange, for lack of people would say, post-modern quality where he tries to mix and match elements of modern pop culture, imagistic TV culture into his books. I think actually very few people can do this well. A lot of people are trying to do this now with online text and online posting into novels. It doesn't translate so far well in almost any. But Welobek was innovative when he was doing this. And he does it relatively well. I agree with you on that. But look, when I ask the reasons for why his lawsuit, I actually think you are totally right

on the deep psychological, or let's say, artistic ambition reasons why he wanted first the exposure through you to cause outrage on old men like him being porn star, and then going back on it for various reasons. But just, I mean, the legal basis, he's claiming that you don't have the right to release footage of him naked or having sex and so on. And on that note, you have movie Honeypot, which also made you notorious in Europe and now United States. If there's one movie of Kirak that I would guess some in my audience have seen or heard about, it's this movie, Honeypot. And, well, I talk too much, Stefan. I have my own thoughts about this, and I'll say them in a moment, but can you tell them roughly what Honeypot was about? Because it's related to what you did with Wellerbeck, yeah.

Well, Honeypot is a portrait of Jeannie. She's amazing. She's a muse, she's a good friend also. And her father stopped her allowance, and she was studying at the university, and her relationship with the other students was difficult at that moment. So she decided to start an Onlyfans, but it was very hard to source good bulls, good men in this sort of left wing philosophy arena that she was living in. And also her thoughts were increasingly right wing. So I had this sort of fantasy about, and she was studying philosophy. So I had this fantasy about transferring this Hegelian idea of thesis, antithesis to the arena of the body of sex. So basically, we made a video where Jeannie says, I'm a left-wing girl, I want to have sex on camera with a right-wing man to solve the culture wars

through this sort of Hegelian joke, in a way. And I sensed stuff would happen from that because it, and indeed, it sourced a philosopher. So the sort of in-house philosopher of the right-wing party in Holland, Sid Lucas, said, I want to do this. I want to take this sort of metaphysical Hegelian challenge. I want to take it seriously and let's go, let's do it. And so we set up a day to shoot it. And it was an experiment, a philosophical, physical experiment. And the film is basically showing you this experiment, what happened on that day. So just to make it clear for audience is you have a, I know Jeannie and Issa and Kate and some of other girls in your collective, they're very pretty girls. Jeannie, pretty girl, just to set for our audience at the time was her early 20s, I would guess,

a philosophy student, saying she's left-wing, but maybe wobbling in that, but on film, in this film at least, saying she's left-wing and is going to sleep sleep or have sex on camera with a right wing intellectual who you say was the one of the house or the house intellectual of the Dutch right or far right. Is this correct? Yes. I mean, they're considered far right by the central central parties. Yes. Well, okay. I mean, by by normal by normal fact, conventional standards, the hard right, let's say party. So not the normie right, you know, so. So okay, so you did this. You You did this video, I watched it. I loved Honeypot by the way, I found it very funny. I want to talk as episode goes on in more detail about your other films too, that I found very entertaining.

But for audience benefit, I want to clarify something. Well, a couple, first of all, the legal situation in Europe, but also Japan and Brazil regarding using images of people, because I think there is misunderstanding, Stefan, on this. Your detractors in, let's say, an American context might say, this guy is a leftist, he's setting up right-wing prominent people, intellectuals, let's say, or Wellerbeck, who's the most well-known, kind of right-coded major novelist, or this guy who was house intellectual of the hard right in Holland, And he's setting them up for Honeypot, which he names the movie Honeypot. That's what he does. He sets them up for sexual humiliation. This is typical leftist antifa, sexual humiliation, kompromat of right-wing figures and so on.

Now, obviously, if I really thought that you were doing that, I wouldn't have you on my show and I wouldn't be interested in the things that you do. But I wanted to disclaim that, if you think it's worth it for a moment for the audience, why it's not that at all. And first of all, just so audience understands, if you were going to do that, like let's have a hidden camera and without somebody's permission release footage of them having sex source, if you do that in the United States, I don't know what happens. But if you do that in Holland, Japan, Brazil, you go to jail, okay? it's not like you get sued for something you go to that is a criminal offense in these countries i just want the audience to understand these men who do this with with stephan sign rights

you know and you know uh wellebek in particular uh has was not didn't just sign contracts you know where you got him drunk and he signed contracts he communicated with you consent numerous times over email and other things is this so yeah of course no of course that's that's also why the judge will in the end allow the movie. It's more sort of like a pause. Like I'm still finishing the movie, so I'm calmly finishing the movie and then I will show it to the judge and it will be passed. I don't see a real problem there. Yes, no I think so too. I mean these people signed away and I don't think that that, let's say, sexual humiliation was either the end effect of these films or your intention. I think it is more that you correctly identified there are certain vain type of men who imagine

themselves as, I'm a right-wing intellectual avant-garde and I will be on camera having sex oars or this, and I am not like the other. I'm not like the populist or whatever low-class right wing. And I think, in some sense, you play on the vanity of intellectuals of all kinds, not just the right wing, but I don't want to overinterpret. Just how would you answer the basic objection I made now regarding this sexual humiliation, kompromat angle? Well, this is of course a joke, because of course other people labeled it as such, so that's why I titled the film in this way. I am whatever you say I am. But I think my priority is, this sounds so lame, but it's sort of above politics, because I'm interested in aesthetics and truth and the artwork discovering these truths.

So when I start filming and it's all discussed before, like we are going to film this thing and whatever happens will be part of the true artwork. Because we go into this arena and I will use my eyes and I will film everything and I will produce a subjective artwork from that. Otherwise I'm not going to spend my time filming this thing. So these are sort of the rules of the game. And I think it will be very wise of the right to embrace this sort of open truth-seeking aesthetic because it would be there, it would be a... I mean the left has abandoned this completely, this notion of freedom, of discovery, of facing humiliation, facing ugly truths also. So if the rights become stuck like that, I think they're just mirroring each other.

Well, I think to a large extent, they already have and already are. And there's very, there are very few sections of the right, both in Europe and United States that are worthwhile, Stefan. But I just want to make it clear for audience, I've heard people attack you that way. I've heard partisans of Wellebeck especially attack you in that manner. I think it, I haven't seen the Wellebeck movie, but I've seen Honeypot and some others, and I find them very funny. I don't interpret them that way really at all. And just to explain for audience roughly the format of the kind of movies and film you make, they're about one hour long or so each, and they are shot digital, digital camera, correct? I actually, I want to talk to you about this later. I think your lighting and everything very nice.

I'm not expert, but shot on digital camera with often voiceovers by you. And it's kind of documentary style, about one hour documentary type thing, focusing often on a character in modern life or situation. But usually I see them as character studies. And so far from the ones I've seen, They are quite, I see it as comedy, which is what I hope I do at my best, too. I see it as comic documentaries, expositions of modern human types, and therefore studies in vanity and delusion, as we are all vain and deluded, especially today, Stefan. Would you agree with this? Yeah, totally. When you first put Honeypot up, it was performed in a stadium or an auditorium, correct? And I think there was kind of riot or displeasure by the left, is that correct? Yeah, that was fantastic.

That was really fantastic. And also it got complicated because during the premiere of the Honeypot film, I asked a now convicted sex offender, rapist, artist, artist who was sort of the Harvey Weinstein of the Dutch art world to sit on a big horse and ride into the audience as the film was playing. Yes. It was all very confusing. He rode the horse into the cinema. Yes. I should tell the audience, and this is a funny story, I have a great uncle or like a great uncle something like that from my mother's side who did that sometime in the early 20th century I don't know exact year but he was in love with a girl and to impress her he was complete plastered drunk and rode with his horse into the cinema to exactly what you just said.

It's beautiful this horse walking into the sort of silver screen environment it was amazing. But the left I mean look the reason I say that is the left didn't like this movie and actually I was surprised to learn from one of your friends told me that um i asked well is the right wing party in in uh holland very mad at you for let's say humiliating their star intellectual uh showing him no they invited us to parties they really liked it they enjoyed it they have a sense of humor they're okay i mean in the beginning in the beginning said lucas was very disappointed to me but he's all said lucas the victim so-called victim and honeypot it has a role in the velbeck film Yes. So he's working with us again. I think they're very, they're taking it very elegantly.

Just so you understand, this guy come off as kind of a fumbling, it's quite embarrassing sexual encounter in the second half. And in the first half of this movie, you start with with Genie's fucking a populist type, soccer type hoodlum, right wing in the beginning of movie. Am I characterizing it correct? And she seems to enjoy that rogering. Yes. Yes. But I did, I should say to audience, I do not find it, this particular one that you made, I didn't find it to be exciting or good erotic pornography in the sense of like finding it titillating. I found it quite the opposite. And at the beginning I said, what is this guy doing? Because second half you're showing this kind of vain, delusional, intellectual right-winger, and he ends up fumbling at sex.

And in the first half, you show, let's say, a populist soccer hoodlum right-winger who admittedly fucks this girl on camera to her enjoyment, but he's not very beautiful with his clothes off or such. So even that could be interpreted as somewhat, you know, you're essentially showing the right wing as, you know, sexually inadequate, so that's an old leftist trope you'll agree so you can understand why people watching Willebeks uh oh no i i i see that first scene of course i'm not aroused by it because i'm not gay but but i don't see it i really like this guy i think it's a fun scene um it's also not a problem that he i mean you told me you like the sex scene in the interesting concern the other film yes we talk about that later so yeah and but but also i mean and this guy in this scene

having sex with Jeannie is a very left-wing math teacher in Berlin. So if there is some sort of truth in that left-wing people know how to have sex better, we should discuss that openly. You know what I mean? Well, now that you bring it up, I was going to talk later. There is another, your basic, I would not call you a pornographer, maybe your detractors would. I like pornography. But Stefan is referring to another movie he made where he does show a sex scene. And in that case, it is Jeannie, again, the same girl, but it's with a left-wing artist, yes? But that scene is erotic. See, exactly, that scene is erotic, Stefan. And that's not a porn actor. That's just a left-wing artist, right? But he has sex sorts very well on camera.

and so then how is that not and also like he's quite gifted physically in multiple ways so like then how is how do you answer then somebody saying well you are purposefully choosing right-wing specimens to show them as sexually inadequate and left-wing specimens to show them as sexually potent and therefore you are just yeah i think there's they see me as too omnipotent it's also part of reality. So I'm not Harvey Weinstein. I cannot pick my actors. It's really reality we are filming here. And also I think maybe to try to raise it to another level is I was raised as a left wing boy. My parents are extremely left wing. And I think the same counts for, frankly, Sid Lucas, the right wing artist. So if you want to win being the right wing,

you're going to have this huge cohort of children of left-wing people who will have to be brought in to your look at the world. For me this happened when I started reading Nietzsche when I was 18. I sort of liberated myself from the Marxism of my parents. But in some sense, just like a Muslim will always be a little bit afraid of God, especially when it comes down to it, when he's about to die, there is a left-wing religion inside of me. And maybe these films are also about, you know, getting that out in these films. So it's sort of limited to see these films as sort of right versus left. I think it's also about developing into a new religion of the future, maybe beyond, let's say, the sort of liberal

left-right wing divide of the 20th century, the post-holocaustian Fukuyama end of history, political culture war stuff. We are going to something new now, you know? Well, I agree with that, Stefan, and I actually, you know, I just brought up that possible objection because I've heard it before, and I want to dismiss it because I've greatly enjoyed some of your other films, which we'll talk about when we come back. And I don't see you as, frankly, I don't really care if you are left-wing or a deeply inchoed type of, you might have some left-wing religious orientations, as you just say, because I see your documentaries as semi-accurate parodies of modern personality types, some of who are interesting in and of themselves, but who all deserve parody,

and you do parody some left-wing types, too, and so forth. So I like that. I think parody, absolute necessity. You know, I named myself Bronze Age Pervert. I didn't name myself Bronze Age Warrior Hero God or whatever. I mean, realizing the degraded, dirty condition and the fundamentally vain striving of all modern types, I think this important step, and it's associated now maybe with something left-wing, but it's very much a Celine step, you know, running everything through the filter of degradation to see what comes out the other side. I very much like this. I see you as in that tradition, you know? Yes, yes, of course, yeah. Yes. look let's go quickly to uh break and we come back i have so much more to ask you do you mind if i

when we come back i ask you about i called you kind of cult leader of this kirak art collective but i don't think it's too much of exaggeration you have almost religious hold on on on various uh of its uh of its members do you mind if we talk about this when we come back stephan let's do that let's do that thank you so much very good have a good break Yes, hello. We are back from break. I just enjoyed the six-presso. I'm here with Stefan Hautenbeek of Kirak, keeping it real art critics. I very much enjoy humor documentary movies. I don't know if you think that's a fair description brief of your work, Stefan, but I wanted to tell audience an amazing, an amazing thing that I've noticed in talking to you, talking to your friends over the last year or so. In this, your cultic religious hold,

basically Stefan has, you can call them groupies, but really they're collaborator artist girls that work for him. Some of them are very pretty girls. They could be a movie. I, you know, I mentioned Jeannie and Isa. There are others, too. And it's just, I can tell audience, These girls would jump off a building for you, Stefan, and I do not exaggerate. No, I really don't exaggerate at all. It's some kind of Rasputin-like, clisty cult leader, you know, David Koresh hold you have on them, and I'm not saying that to attack. I wish I knew how. I want to tell audience things that I've tried to do. I have not... I have not... I experimented with prostitutes when I was maybe 25, 26, just to see how it was a few times, and first time exciting, and then I leave it off.

But really, only in very recent years, on the advice of a friend who is a major pussyhound, he older now, and he tell me, you know, prostitutes are great. Why you not try this? It's very convenient. They like you. And they go home when they're done and this. So, I only started experiment more with prostitute over last few years, and then I got idea because one of my favorite historical organizations, the Dark Ocean Society of Japan, and before World War II, they had extensive spy, people don't know this, International Spy Network Japan was very powerful as an international spy agency before World War II. And somehow, even in the Cold War, they tried to resuscitate similar things. But basically, any brothel that you went to in East Asia, you were bound to have maybe a Japanese girl

who had been trained by this Japanese ultra-nationally secret society, basically a mafia, and they were using these girls, not so much for kompromat. You know, the whole kompromat thing doesn't work. You can't really blackmail people. It's not stable. They use these girls to collect information. So I got the idea. Why don't I use one of my regular girls to collect, to train her to collect information? And I have to tell you, is incredibly difficult even when it's a prostitute and you're paying her and you have good relationship. These girls, I mean the ones I meet, are either low IQ problem or even if they are intelligent enough, how can I command their loyalty? Because I suspect the Dark Ocean Society told them, if you betray us, we are going to eat your family's liver.

So those girls did what the Japanese spymasters wanted. To me, I don't feel like I can command these girls' loyalty. And by the way, there's a long-winded tangent I go on. I don't mean to say it's an equivalent thing, but for me to see a man able, It's not even like if you've had a girl in love with you. I don't think you can easily command her to jump off a building and she'll do it. But I feel like these girls would do that for you, Stefan. And I hope I'm not being insulting saying that or something to me is huge compliment. It's a phenomenon I have not yet noticed before in our time. I mean, Rasputin could do it. But what you say, after all I say this, Hannah, would you mind hinting at your secret for audience how you're able to do this?

Yes, I think I don't really have a goal. So, I mean, of course I suggest things, I have ideas, but I don't want them to collect information for me. I think what I want, it sounds super cheesy, is for them to become the artist that they want to be. So I make these films, I was making films without actresses for the first, I think, 12 episodes, there's no women in the films. And then all of a sudden these women came to my premieres and screenings and I started telling them about my ideas and they said, yes, we want to do this. This is interesting. They came with ideas themselves. I think there's a big desire and a big lag. Like Hollywood used to be the ultimate brothel where you could go as a girl and exchange and sort of like consume your own

attractiveness and all these things. But Hollywood is bankrupt because it has become so woke. So art always has been this arena where women who are smart and artistic could sort of experiment with their erotic powers. And I'm interested in that. So I was always reading female magazines when I was 13 years old. I really enjoyed dating women. I'm not like Andrew Tate who who just wants to use them to have babies or whatever. I like spending time with women. So there's not really a utility to it, if you know what I mean. And then it sort of spirals out of control. That's what my mind went to. I mean, they are attached to you and loyal to you because I think they genuinely see you as a great artist and they want to attach their artistic ambitions and fortunes to yours.

But that's a great testament to, I think, your spiritual and artistic powers. I hope I'm not being too flattering. By the way, for audience, when Stefan says the word idea, I've noticed this with my Dutch friends for many, many years. They pronounce it ID. So when he said that these girls came to your showings of movies and they had their own IDs, he doesn't mean like a photo ID. Sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. Idea, yeah, I know you're right. Absolutely. But Stefan, no, people accuse me of being cult leader and this, and I'm definitely not. I have trouble sometimes even convincing my friends, hey, this guy wrote an article, can you retweet? You know, they won't do that. Let alone, you are like a Frankist, Klisty, coven leader, but I think genuine artists, maybe who genuinely love women,

can maybe do that, can have David Koreshting going. I don't love women, Stefan. I hope you do not hate me for this. I don't enjoy the company. No, and I really appreciate that. And I think that's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in your art and what you do, because to me, it's always a mystery if a man doesn't like women, because I assume the passion remains, the desire for women remains, maybe the desire to raise a family remains. So all your talk about how to do this with women if you don't really like women, I see this as a, I can see, I understand that it might be a personal tragedy in a way because I'm actually happy in my monogamous relationship with Kate. You know, I like this adventure of being together with a woman for 13 years and building something together,

going through all these phases of, you know, the beginning of the relationship. And then it's, you know, for me, it's beautiful. Yes, so I'm just sort of lucky with that maybe. Yes, well, Stefan, an artist has every right and power to become married, I think Nietzsche mentioned that it's only the philosopher as married that would be a joke, which is why Socrates did this. But listen, I wanted to ask you about this other movie, this other movie, the one that you said has a good sex scene in the middle. And the movie is about various hipsters, leftist, even art students and such, who were canceled in Europe, canceled in Holland over mostly sexual things, sexual harassment, MeToo type things. Is this correct, this movie? Yes, Under a Sinking Sun, yes.

Yes, would you mind telling the audience more about this movie, how you came to think of it and what is inside it? Yes, so after we put this convicted rapist on the horse and we had this honeypot premiere, the curious thing was that more cancelled, let's say right wing cancelled people came to us and said we also want to be in these movies because we don't have a platform anymore, can you help us? Which is a strange thing, because what can I do? I'm just an artist, I'm filming what happens in the real world. So we set up this little office where we would do interviews with canceled boys who maybe had a fight on their art academy with a girlfriend, and then the girlfriend would say that he's a rapist or stuff like that. You know, the sort of Me Too nonsense,

not on the level of Harvey Weinstein, but on the level of the lowest, you know, basically teens reenacting Hollywood Me Too in real life on art academies. Yes. And I was sort of interested in this trickle down mayhem shit show. And then we started proposing them things like, okay, so now you're at this complete low, so maybe what can we build from this position? And this is what this film is. You know, it's a sort of experiment with people who are at the bottom. Yes, did any of them manage to escape their cancellations? Just to make it clear for audience, I was shocked, I saw in beginning of this movie, Stefan is filming basically a hipster, someone you'd recognize in the United States. You would think he's left wing or something. He's got a nose ring, he's got tattoos.

He wants to be an artist or he wants to be art student. And I don't even understand what that means because he's not public figure and he was not anonymous, but he was apparently canceled by, the amazing thing is not like he drugged a girl and arguably raped her or they had sex when they were drunk or something and she can plausibly even say, this guy raped me, but they just had a bad relationship from what I can tell and she was displeased by some of his behavior during the relationships that doesn't remotely rise to the level of abuse or rape or assault. And she just felt mistreated as a girlfriend and managed just with that alone with Instagram posts to cancel him too and he could not get into art school. Is this what it's like in Europe now, Stefan?

Yeah, so, oh yeah, maybe that's better to explain it. So what happened is that these art schools completely turned into therapy sessions where the teachers were just discussing with the women how bad men are and nobody was sort of practicing art anymore. So in this sort of disaster we also got contacted by art students who said you are the most critical art critics in the world, you are ruthless Stefan, I want you to come to my art academy and criticize my work because my teachers don't dare to say anything because they are afraid they get canceled. So this film shows us going into these sort of little ateliers that people have in their art academy and sort of giving them hard criticism. So this film is really about this space that opens up when people really desire

for real criticism, real contact, real, you know, engagement with the stuff that they invest their time in, their art. I appreciate that in the movie but I just wanted to remark on the insane quality of the sexual politics in modern, what modern contemporary present-day Europe is the same as in Argentina apparently where a woman denouncing you for complete bullshit that has nothing to do with assault or rape or you know just he mistreated me by not complimenting my dress or threatening to to leave me threatening to leave me when we were together on a trip in France and therefore I'm canceling him as an abuser and a rapist you're saying this is the social atmosphere in Europe right now yes absolutely yeah that's insane you know and i want the audience to understand

it's hard to put into words what makes a movie funny and so on i find your movies very funny stephan and this one especially in the beginning when you have what you call the gay pink egyptian right tariq is that his name and he's parading this uh man it is just very nice documentary cinema, I would call it buffoonish, but it's hard to know in your movies when you're being serious and when is joke and I think that's good touch. I've always tried to do the same, that must be touchstone modern tumor I think. The other movie I very much enjoy has to do with art world scene an art dealership scene. Would you mind telling the audience about this profile of a Los Angeles art dealer named Sinkovitz? Yes, this was really part of the beginning of my filming. So I was a

struggling artist in Berlin. I was just canceled for a big show I had in Amsterdam. So maybe Let's just start the story from the beginning, do you mind? Go ahead. So in 2005 I made a video which was called Cultural Superiority where we would stage beheading videos, ISIS beheading videos in the desert in Egypt with anthropology students like rich women who studied Arab language in Cairo and we would take them to the desert and we would drop ecstasy and we would sort of like have a ketchup beheading party and I showed these videos and the Stelig Museum which is a big international museum in Europe, it's in Amsterdam, really saw in these beheading videos a sort of critique on the Iraq war, American imperialism,

all these things. So it gave me some sort of notoriety as a sort of critical anti-imperial artist and then I got offered a big show at the same museum and they said here's a big bag of of money, make whatever you want. And I basically gave all the money to porn actors. And I said, make an artwork for the Stedelijk Museum. And they made this really hardcore, sort of sex, art, porn parody. Nobody knew if it was serious or not. And this was the beginning of sort of like really this sort of me too feel in society. So in this sort of art film, girls were fucked in the face, slapped, all these things. So the curator was very nervous and he canceled the show. Yes. And nobody wanted to collect my art anymore. I lost all my money. So I sort of escaped to Berlin. And there I became a part

of this sort of post internet art scene. And these were sort of artists making work about how terrible it is that we are all online. This sort of super whiny, boring, academic art. I really see it as a remnants of this sort of pessimistic 20th century thinking where you do like media critique in your art. And I was just so bored. It was all so sterile and German and sort of lame. And I basically started filming this sort of lame scene out of desperation, just like sort of like, like there were 70,000 artists living in Berlin and they were all artists and nothing was coming out of it. And I was thinking like, how can this, how can this be? You know, like all these people wasting their lives making stuff, which is not interesting. I think I am making interesting, like weird stuff,

but it cannot be showed because it's too radical, these things. Yes. And then there was one art dealer in Los Angeles and he was just buying up the stuff that sold well and like mostly African artists or artists with sort of like a woke post-colonial touch. But he, as a personality, was very ruthless. Like he was this sort of champagne lefty, Trump-like figure who would scream at people and buy up their work and threatened to dump it all on the market to destroy their careers. So I thought, here we have like a super successful, rich kid art dealer, and he is considered the enemy by all the people that I also hate. So why not make a documentary about him and really embellish him, really make a hero out of him and sort of see if I can sell that art piece

or to a gallery or to a television station or whatever. And then I went there and I started filming him and it was sort of really amazing to me because I really like him as a person, but I am appalled by his aesthetical taste, his ideology, his sort of, in my eyes, complacent left-wing, you know, like sort of African art-collecting taste. Well, give the audience a sense of what this man does, because I found, and especially if people are really concerned with positioning of right-wing versus left-wing, which when it comes to this, they really shouldn't be, But I found this to be a great parody of a kind of what you just said, champagne socialist, left-wing art collector, and his delusions about promoting, I mean, give people an image of the kinds of things he collects from Africa.

There's some kind of African artist that makes things with the bags from aid, You know that aid wheat or whatever rice is shipped into Africa and he collects those bags and he puts them on walls or something and this guy... Africa produced the most amazing artifacts like these abstract masks that inspired Picasso it's all pretty amazing but of course now Africa is completely trashed So you still have, you also have like black rich kid artists who go to art academy or somehow get informed by Contemporary discourse and they figure that it's not that you should sort of collect basically Capitalistic trash and hang it on the wall and then put a wall text next to it saying that that you're critiquing imperialism Capitalistic investments in your continent and then you get rewarded by you know

like the art secret in the west. So I think you're looking at that, you're looking at the complete degradation of African vitality, because of course, African has this very vital, I mean, it informed Joseph Conrad, Picasso. It is really a mirror of sort of the spoiled aristocratic white man in a way. You can go to the Congo, you can experience all these things it's amazing, but it has even lost that quality And it's completely instrumentalized in this sort of empty art market bullshit. Yeah, this is not a reflection on the intrinsic worth of the African people or African artistic traditions. In fact, one of the big problems of modern left is their ignorance, their lack of curiosity to the outside world. They do not have the appreciation of actually primitive cultures

and what makes them interesting. You know, Gauguin going to Tahiti because he actually wanted to be part of that and he loved that. Or some of the figures you talk about who were very impressed by the art of Oceania or the art of Africa and wanted to find out about it on its own terms. These people, they want to put the actually whole global south into one basket, you know, NPC, anonymous beige person who needs Western aid and who in particular is a victim of whatever abstract force you want, capitalism, neoliberalism, imperialism, neocolonialism, et cetera. And then they as artists become social commentators and political saviors of that. But the actual distinctions between the thousands of peoples of the global South and anything genuine they might have to offer is completely erased

is what I kind of take you as saying now. And this guy, Sinkovitz, fits that almost, I don't think has any appreciation or interest in African history or African anything. To him, it's a symbol of victimization at hand of the West, right? And I mean, this is an attitude we all know from academia, from, in this case, the art world, the political world, is part of what your movie's about. Am I mischaracterizing this? Yes, but I think you're characterizing it correctly, even though I do think that Seem Kufit knows the history of Africa quite well. But I mean, at least in the art he's collecting, it's very superficial. It has this sort of left-wing quality to it. So I agree there. But I think the discovery that I made with this portrait I was making of this man is that,

even when we live in this shitty world where everything is completely hollowed out from the inside, you can use sort of Nietzschean aesthetics or portraiture in a way to create again, a complex image of the left, of a champagne lefty. And I think this is what I set out to do. I was trying to create something maybe complex or beautiful or whatever in this sort of hollowed out situation and not take his ideological problems only at its own merits. only at its own merits. I felt I sort of succeeded in that film with that attempt. Well, I found it to be a very funny movie. I found your voiceovers. I don't know if you meant them this way, but this is what I mean as it's unclear if it's meant as humor or not. I started laughing out loud during your voiceover. Yeah, of course, yeah.

You know, with this echo, Stefan acts as narrator in some of these documentaries and has a kind of echo voice over her. And I think it's a very funny caricature of this man, Simkovic, but I'm saying that as a compliment. I don't think you set out to caricature him. I think he's a self-caricature, as maybe you and I also are. This is what I mean. There's a vanity and delusion to all modern personality formation, I think. And in this case, it happens to be be this left-wing corruption of the modern art dealership scene. I don't know if you agree with what I just said, Stefan, but also on the art dealership scene, do you have opinions about this, about claims that since at least the 1950s and the abstract expressionist movement, the art dealership world has acted exactly like what we just

said now. kind of, on one hand, laundering of left-wing ideology, on the other hand, simply money laundering. In other words, inflating the value of certain trivial crap kind of artworks with a narration, a story behind them, a text taking over the visual aspect. So, you know, something that Sinkovich picks up another art dealer that would normally not sell for anything can because of their imprimatur sell for much more and then that acts both to launder ideology and to launder money. What do you say on this? I think I agree and of course all arts reflects the status quo over time so this is this is the 20th century you're looking at but this sort of complete vanity of it I think has to do also with the fact that we are now trading art so we have these art objects

that can change hands of an owner. So it becomes a commodity like art is a way for a Russian oligarch to stash value in a way. And also as an art dealer you somehow are attached to your inventory so it's very difficult to change your taste as you go along. This is not something that is rewarded. So it also, you have to be loyal to your taste because otherwise you abandon your own inventory and then this then transmits to the artist also. Like artists are rewarded when they produce the same stuff their entire lives when they basically sit in their studio making the same shit over and over and over again. Then of course there becomes a sort of cynical awareness of this this so in a sort of hyper-ironic way artists start to criticize the fact that they are

instruments to basically produce fungible items and you create this sort of hyper-irony situation that nobody really enjoys and I think now maybe with you know like new technology and AI and sort of more digital world coming like growing we might be a little bit like released from this attachment to actual physical objects and we maybe can go back to a more aristocratic model where a rich patron simply funds an artwork because he wants it to exist. Well let's see if that ever happens because an aristocratic model was only possible on the basis of an actual aristocracy which a secure long-term class that had you know ability to develop higher tastes because they didn't have to worry about their day-to-day life. I don't know if anywhere

in the world qualifies for that anymore, Stefan. That's a high thing to hope for. But do you, I mean, I know I agree with what you're saying. Of course, this is a product of the leisure of aristocracy, but isn't it also to consolidate your power and offer your underlings, the people beneath you, a sort of aesthetic vision to all be part of. So you are the ruler, you are the rules but we can all together look at this artwork at this aesthetic vision there's a consolidating power to it and I think this is what is instrumental about art for society and I think it would maybe fit the more sort of post liberal world a little bit better as opposed to this sort of like autonomy fiction of the artist of the 20th century where the artist itself

becomes this priest who tells us what the world should be. Yes, well, this big subject, I don't know if this, I don't know, I do think for what you are suggesting, a patron-led art scene, art movement, you would need some type of taste, some type of standard of taste that is expected. I mean, you are right in Renaissance, for example, many great artworks were promoted by tyrants who were not exactly of long aristocratic lines, and they did do it to show themselves as big men who were supporting, let's say, the Sforza tyrant in Milan. His relationship with Leonardo da Vinci is legendary. But that being said, that took place in a context where there was some audience that had developed a need for that art, a need, in other words, taste, had developed to a great extent.

I don't know that this can exist today. So, for sure, you can have patronized art or whatever it's called. You can have patron-led art, but I'm not sure if it will be any good. The advantage of what you call the priest, the artist as priest, which comes out already out of 19th century, the avant-garde artist, so many were inspired by this image come out of, Well, a few sources, but as you know, Schopenhauer is very important for this. But the advantage of that is, yes, he can work alone and he can innovate alone. I don't know that anything can still replace this, Stefan. I think it's a bigger expectation to think that there is some kind of class of patrons that has sufficient tastes to sustain art and demand art according to their taste.

I think that's more ambitious than expecting the occasional genius artist to be the rare Van Gogh on his own, you know? Yes, but I think I understand your modesty and I understand why it's necessary to be modest and in a way romantic about it, it will never happen. But aren't we, I mean, you and I and a few others already building towards this. I mean, I think Renaissance is a great example. You have this new class, merchant class, banking class, and they need this sort of information that comes out of ancient, from the Greeks, from the Romans to sort of like open up this Christianity a little bit to make things available to them in order to rise as a class. And isn't this very comparable to what is happening now where this industrial elite is sort of replaced

by this new technological industrial elites. And I mean, of course it will have a very different shape. It will not look like the Renaissance for sure. I hope not, because then it will be Quij. But let me just say, you and I have shared this taste for nostalgic reenactment of art, like you just said. Look, it's very possible. From what I hear, the new tech elite and so on, they do have a hunger for the elements of aesthetics of wanting to know which direction art will go and so forth. I do not offer, myself, now for you, that's different. I really am just Internet poster, and I make jokes online, is all I do. But I do hope that these gentlemen can achieve your hopes of generating new art movement, of innovation, and so forth. I do hope for that. But I wanted, in this connection,

to mention a very funny scene from your movie. And we're talking again about key rock. So, which episode is it, this Simcovic profile of this art dealer from Los Angeles? Episode eight. Episode eight, Simcovic, where he's profiling this art dealer from Los Angeles, and there's a very funny scene where, is it an art student or art curator? Some bitch, I don't know. She gets so angry when someone points out that this artwork is just decoration, which in my opinion is the best way to defend modern contemporary art from much of 20th century. It's not really profound. pleasant decoration and she gets so touchy at this, that's a very funny scene, Stefan. It's a very funny scene and I mean it's a very ugly piece of art so it's not decorative in a

visual sense, it's moral decoration because it's about the wall text. It basically explains that some woman made some ugly slab of plastic because she had a trauma or something. So it's not even decoration in a sort of classical sense? Yes, they get so touchy, they have such delusions about themselves. Yes, I guess an inheritance of this artist as priest, but they wouldn't put it in a spiritual sense. They see themselves as artists, as political expounders, political critics of modern power structures, modern economic exploitation structures. And in this sense, Stefan, I wanted, if you could comment some more before we go to break, and I hope you you can come back for another segment, but this issue of what Painted Word, if you know

this book by Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word, where talk about how during abstract expressionism, but I think it's continued into exactly what we're talking now, the text, the narration of the art replaces the art. And I think it's important to realize that a rather mediocre text, some narration that that you would never look at twice, can because it is paired with a piece of art that again on its own you would also never look at twice, but together the pairing, it's a kind of deceptive thing in the same way that some women who are not pretty can get the pixie haircut and it's kind of an optical trick and they can kind of look cute with short hair sometimes. And in this way, pairing up a mediocre text never read again, with a bad art, can make the art, instead of looks bad, it now looks

kind of mysterious and profound. And by this way, through the agency of people like Simcovic and other art dealers, the value of an artwork is greatly increased in monetary terms, and it acts, again, yes, to launder ideology and launder money. But maybe you have your own opinions about this. I am very concerned about this idea of text replacing the visual aspects. It's not just, by the way, visual. It's infected the culinary scene now, too. So I went to a very ridiculous restaurant, Michelin star in Lisbon, that is run... So weird. Yes, it's run by this Bosnian, and he's so cynical. I can tell this is this kind of gypsy, Balkanoid, you know, who very cynically saw through and like, hey, I'm going to take these Western stupid people for, I'm gonna take them for all they have.

So he serves crap food at this restaurant. The only good food, I forget what it's called, I think 100 maneras, it doesn't matter. There's one Bosnian chef, people will know who I'm talking about, stay away from his restaurant. The food is crap. The only good food is when he tries to reproduce his grandmother's recipes for the appetizers, and then when he does all the innovation, it's, you can eat better at McDonald's, I do not exaggerate, but every part of this menu is accompanied by a ridiculous story that he tells his staff to repeat to you. And kind of that's supposed to replace the fact that the food sucks. By the end of the meal, excuse to repeat, I think I may have said this on a past episode, But Stefan, he, some story that the waiter told me

that this guy was, you know, it's always something politically sentimental or exploitative, like he was beaten in his youth by his father. Now, you think about being in a restaurant and the waiter starts telling you that the chef was beaten by his father as a boy. I started to laugh. I couldn't stop hysterically laughing at that. And they stole my phone. That's amazing, that's amazing. Yeah, they stole my phone because I started to laugh. Thankfully, it was locked and quickly erased. But they stole, you know, and I couldn't stop laughing like, jeez. Yeah, it's but see what I mean? The text supposed to replace the food. It's always some the political text. Do you have any comment on this? There are so many things you can say about that.

I think it has to do with the need for stuff to be mediocre, because in the mediocrity lies the promise that everybody can be an artist, which is I think the basic message of 20th century art. And then of course there is the suffering, like people want to suffer, like beautiful women want to suffer for a man. People go to a museum to suffer for an artwork, to experience something. But it's so difficult to really make people suffer in a beautiful aesthetic, artistic way. So you replace the suffering with boredom, which is of course something that Nietzsche wrote about, like basically praying is this sort of common people's way of experiencing something deep. So I think it has to do with this and I think also the effect of the juxtaposition that

you were talking about, you have a mediocre text paired with a mediocre image and you sort of get confused which one is more mediocre. This is definitely part of it. And what was new for me, I had never thought about this, when I was filming this priest bitch in the Sivkovic film is that she was saying you are insulting the artist for not taking her interpretation of the artwork as gospel. And this was actually new to me because I am still raised in a Bauhaus art academy in in Europe where perception or how do you see things and how this perception can be subjective is the end goal of the artwork. But when I came to America, I really experienced that even this was sort of erased away from the artwork. Now we really have to reproduce literal explanations and sort of learn them by heart

and transmit them to each other, which is sort of like it precursors consensual sex, consensual sex, if you know what I mean. I know exactly what you mean. And I want, Stefan, I've been keeping you for a while. I'd like to do, to take a break and come back to talk further about this and about an idea to bridge the problem we're talking about to no longer think at least of myself as artists to think of art as entertainment. I know that sound, but would you like to talk more about this and related matter of future of art we come back. Of course. Very good. I may get I may get champagne because I I becoming I becoming tongue-tied nordic like you without alcohol I become introverted. I will get a nice bottle of bubbles for yourself. I will yes I yes we do I come right back.

Yes welcome back to episode and I am going to be interrupted by Major Domo of Hotel I Stay. he will bring a bottle of champagne or kava, whatever they have. Oh, nice. Nice. Yes, I too nervous talking spurg with people. But I need to explain something to audience, too, on this last segment. The reason you are hearing maybe difference in recording quality on my end is I do not have my usual recording equipment, microphone, nice mic, and so on. on the safari I went in this last week without yet revealing full details because I don't know how much I am allowed to say. But I will tell you this, that I was basically in full combat war zone. I'm not going to pretend I fought myself, but yes, there were bullets snapping around and such thing. Very exciting adventure for me.

So this why maybe you hear me as if talking out of bathtub. I hope you do not mind it, Stefan. In any case, welcome back to the show. And I wanted to ask you your opinion on this idea of art as entertainment, as a way to bypass exactly the problem of the faggotries of the art establishment. Okay, I think it's coming. I think I must answer the door. Nice. Nice bottle. they bring and they will open oh yes uh yes i wish Stefan Stefan when do we meet and we share uh we share chinteng i'm a little bit jealous i also want to go on an adventure here bullets whistling yes well uh it's not uh when it happens in the moment it you are jaded and somehow yes you see here yeah you are jaded and somehow dissociated when

it's actually happening around you, or at least I am. I never get to actually experience life in person, you know. Yes, I understand that. Because last time we had like a friendly talk on the telephone, no recording, and you told me I'm not going to, let's not do a podcast together, a conversation, because these conversations about art between artists, that's not, it's always a problem sort of, but is it because you're now in a war zone that you want to talk about art? I don't know, Stefan, but I don't like self-conscious idea of art and self-conscious idea of artists thinking he's artist anymore. In many ways, that's been tarnished and destroyed by precisely the kinds of people we've talked about on the last segment. And they control the funding for,

they control the displays, the platforms, the conference centers, and so forth. and a friend pointed out this recently with regards to making movies because I kept telling him uh I want after my next book which should come out I hope in the next two to three months amazing I want to do movies I always have but I want to do genre movies for a number of reasons whether it's pornography or rather maybe horror movie I was talking with good friend for us to do horror movie. Because it forces you to be more disciplined. There are genre standards and rules you have to follow as opposed to if I was going to be, oh, I'm a big artist and I'm going to make movie and it's going to be about a spurg or sensitive young man in a city. And that

is an invitation to be aimless and self-indulgent. Whereas when you are making things according According to the standards of a genre like horror, you have to deliver something audience expects they want to be entertained. I was talking recently to quite perceptive man. He points this out to me. This is good idea of art as entertainment to bypass because when you consider some of my favorite filmmakers, like let's say David Lynch, and he was art house, cinema, kind mass-produced too, but arthouse cinema maker. That type of movie, more than others, is subject entirely to the pressures that we've been talking about. He, more than others, and people like that, are subservient in some way to leftist, or it doesn't matter even the political orientation,

but this kind of art establishment, they have to kiss ass and work entirely within that and they're at the mercy of the, whereas if you short-circuit that, you say I'm an entertainer, I'm going to make a product that people can enjoy on a visceral level and I'm not really part of this critic circuit somehow. Isn't that a way to short-circuit all of this? I think that's definitely the case and also but it also has to do with your personality as an artist because And forgive me for getting too serious about all this stuff But I think your art when you write or when you make these radio broadcasts, it's really about space and atmosphere And about a sort of a certain feel And I mean, it's it takes great discipline to do it in that way. I don't have this patience

So I sort of fall back on this post-modern avant-garde-istic you have to find your form with every artwork sort of discipline which is also a very disciplined act. I don't have the patience to do this genre thing but I completely understand it. It's also the reason why The Shining is one of Kubrick's best films. I mean, there's a great relaxation where you can give yourself to a genre. I think Quentin Tarantino is an example of this. of course David Lynch and also if you're a weird person like David Lynch it will be special anyway so just try to make like a murder mystery like like he did and it comes out as something very special so no I think that's definitely a way to go about it I sort of enjoy the perversion of of trying to make films

that have the pretense of avant-garde yes and you could and you could even see that as a style form also as a genre also avangarda is a genre i enjoy very much the humor in your movies i find uh visceral humor and i wanted to ask you in this connection do you think when i look at the modern art since early 20th century uh you see i keep mentioning Louis Ferdinand Céline, and it is this mix of working-class humor and highbrow. And I love that particular mix. And I'm not going to say all great art or whatever since 1900 can be characterized that way. Obviously, much is not, you know, whatever. Proust is not, Mishima is not, many others are not, but a lot can be fit into that description I just gave, the working class brash vitality and humor combined with high brow and kind

of bypassing everything else and everything academic. I'm very attracted to that kind of mix. I think that goes entirely with the idea of artist entertainment. I don't know what you think of that. That's a part of it, I think, and doesn't it also have to do with the alienation you feel of being in a different class, a different space, of traveling, of raising in the ranks, of starting an academic career. There is of course, I mean this is also what you talked about Stendhal, the sort of class adventure is very much part of the art of modernity. So it's only logical that artists who suffered from this, like Céline, they created an entire form out of that. I think the same is for, is the case for Michel Wahlberg. Yes. Well, it used to be called the bourgeois, right?

And Flaubert absolutely hates the bourgeois, attacks them and so on. But it's expanded so much beyond that, that now very much entirely sectors of society, entire sectors in academia and the art world and so on that self-present and self-understand themselves as anti-bourgeois have also the same characteristics. And it's this polite, corporate, official world of the middle and upper middle classes broadly speaking, but it's not really just class. It's because, you know, anybody who joins it becomes that kind of erased creature. And I think that kills everything. It kills spirit, it kills creativity. It kills enjoyment of sex orders probably. And so this why someone like Celine or such try to escape that. I mean, even two examples I just gave

of art that doesn't include that if you consider Proust or Mishima, they came out of, they came out of, I mean even they attacked the bourgeois of their time but at least they were already, they were in societies that hadn't been completely let's say erased by modern forms of middle-class managerial society or whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Office culture is how you might put it, you know? Yes, yes. I mean, to me, Simcovic, who you showed in that movie, I would call him an office culture man. Maybe you don't, but he's an aspect of that also. Yeah, I mean, the desire for real vitality, real danger. I mean, of course, Celine nails that in his books. Like, he sort of like achieves that so wonderfully and this is i think one of the great challenges of a more like of an ever more sort of

safe cultural world um the desire for violence and vitality and sex and all these things yes but stephan uh you say you grew up in a leftist environment you were a leftist artist for a long time and then no i was never a leftist artist but i i grew up in a leftist family with leftist values you know like very atheist left-wing values yeah but you say that Nietzsche led to your kind of snapping out of that can you comment a little bit more on that because yes very interesting for me this yeah so of course if you grow up in this very Dutch bourgeois family where everything is immediately translated into a moral value like a predestined outcome we do things because they are good etc. and you notice in yourself that this doesn't really sort of add up in the way you

experience the world and you are not maybe that bothered by yeah the good or the bad then sort of when you start reading Nietzsche when you're a young kid you your your eyes open because he he opens your eyes for the aesthetical world but he also shows you how the genealogy of morality sort of this sort of christian history we have sort of caused the entire world to be as it is so so in a way Nietzsche is this great comfort for people for everybody who who has something of the gay science in him uh already by nature uh that's that's also i think why he starts his books with with saying things like how can i prepare you the reader for the experience of this book if you not already have some of this experience in you.

Yeah so for me, so many things just clicked and immediately fell into place when I saw this and it sort of helped me connect the secular christianity within left-wing thinking etc. yes and for a long time I was amazed by how Nietzsche was later integrated into let's say the thinking of Nick Land's but also you know like French post modern thinker thinkers and it always surprises me how how terribly he is actually built upon like we are not really standing on the shoulders of Nietzsche in academia I think and also not in art I I really have the idea that that this sort of aesthetical idea of art still has to land in art, in philosophy. So I see him as the philosopher of the future. You once sent me, you said you were sold on Nietzsche

at around the age of 17, 18, when you read the gay science and in particular aphorism 80 of art and nature on the ancient Greek love of ancient Athenian particular love of unnatural speechifying and he kind of contradicts the generally accepted view of why people love tragedy and tragic plays in the ancient Greek world. Do you have comments on that? Yeah so I will butcher it, but I think what he explains beautifully is how unnatural art is in a way. How enhanced it plays with our perception and appreciation of whatever we experience as real. By making this very strong and I think what I suffered from as a child is that I was raised to play the violin and Bach was the highest thing. And I think what you listen to

in the music of Bach is that all the voices have an equal quality so you have four voices playing at the same time and they're all important and this is sort of what makes this art sort of elevated in a way and it's also why somebody like Glenn Gould appreciate him from a sort of modernist perspective but I always really appreciated the sort of hierarchical structure of of a Mozart symphony. And I never really understood how to explain the criticism on Mozart by people who really like Bach or this more sort of structural modernistic kind of, of course it's older, but in a way it's more modernist kind of music. And I think Nietzsche sort of helped me understand that this allergy for a certain hierarchy is really this result of equality thinking

caused by Christianity, which oozes into aesthetics from all directions. So if you look at abstract painting, if you look at the way music developed, it is all sort of informed by this E.E. that the different elements that make up a thing should be equal to each other. It's all a reflection of this vision of the world. Like everybody is special, everybody's equal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think sort of Nietzsche showed to me like how this is tied to morality. And of course he needed ancient Greek theater plays to sort of discover something about morality and art and how we misread ancient art. Yes. Yeah, for me, it's just this incredible world of how morality and our idea of the good is tied with our aesthetic appreciation of things. Yes, Stefan, I wanted to ask you,

What are, it's not directly related to what we are talking, but as I am drinking, my mind wanders and I want to discuss with you more our favorite books, our favorite movies. What are some of your favorite filmmakers? I really enjoy Kubrick still. Yes. I like this sort of idea. There's always a central psychopath apparent in the film, in The Shining, of course, the space movie. But even in Icebite Shit, this sort of institution of the marriage as a sort of central psychopath governing the people in that film, I really like it. I also think to me it's a bit distant and cold Kubrick in a way. And it's also completely opposite to what I do. It's completely different. But I think he does treat the sets as a performance spectacle. You see that in the documentary that was made

about The Shining, where you see that he really drives the woman mad, and he uses sort of the narcissism of Jack Nicholson to create the effects in the film. So there's all these interesting overlaps. My favorite Kubrick movie is Barry Lyndon, which is also kind of character study psychopath. He's not quite a psychopath, but you know, adventurer, soldier of fortune, gambler, Irish drunkard character study. It's such a beautiful film. It's so amazing, you know? Yeah, it's just incredible. But who else besides? Someone in, when I advertised this show recently, someone compared your films to Lars Von Trier. Do you agree with that? Do you like him? To be honest, I find him a bit boring and complacent in his sort of modernistic, mockumentary stuff. I really like his hero Bergman.

I think Bergman is really one of the great artists of the 20th century. I don't know if you've seen a funny Alexander. My favorite Bergman movie, you're talking about the guy who made Persona, yes? That's one of my favorite, yes. Yeah, I think that's really sort of, I mean, and it's complete bourgeois art in its highest, highest form, but it has so much sort of psychological complexity And I mean, he's a theater filmmaker. They're like theater plays in a way. I think I'm less interested in his sort of aesthetical adventures. Like Persona is less interesting to me than Funny Alexander or as more sort of actor-orientated films. Yes. More narrative-driven. He's a very good writer. But last for three, no, I mean, it's great. I mean, I'm happy he exists,

But in the end, it's sort of a bit lazy, complacent, welfare state art, I think. Yes, my favorite movies are maybe, well, I used to say they were Persona and Mulholland Drive. And I liked very much Movesang by Léos Carax. I don't know if you like this avant-garde French filmmaker who made Pola X and the lovers of bridge nine and so on in the 80s and 90s and early 2000s. You really like the atmosphere in film, so that's very important for you. I think I primarily watch a movie for the atmosphere, and to achieve that dream state is the most difficult. Maybe it's not difficult, but for me as the watcher it feels like the most difficult thing and the most valuable thing for me anyway yeah i understand that that's all i mean i also see that in your in your writing and in

your other sort of artistic performances like i think i i really like the lutherian quality of of of certain filmmaking like in bergman for me the what quality the sort of unmasking lutherian quality like luther yes um that that film sometimes can have i i i never was really able to attach to david lynch in that sense um maybe it's my stupid calvinistic sort of dutch you know what i mean like this sort of dry uh brechtian outlook on things i understand what you mean and i have uh friends who have very strong objections to david lynch in particular um they find him pretentious they find him random and i think no it's not pretentious at all like he's a fucking genius like milholland drive is a masterpiece it's amazing it's just so beautiful

yeah i know i i just like i love sort of what happens with with the blonde girl and the brunette and the sort of the symbolism and it's very beautiful and the acting is amazing in that movie i just mean to say that uh i do love milholland drive but it's a great movie i think despite the kind of pomo post-modernist mind games that he kind of engages in and i i do understand why some people don't like it. They find it too cerebral, too game-playing, and I see beyond that. The mood overwhelms me, and I feel that if he had just gone with the mood, which he does in his last real movie, Inland Empire, and then the remake of or the rather revisited Twin Peaks that that he did in the 2010s. I think those are, in some ways, his masterpieces because he lets go almost completely of all psychodrama,

all narration, and it's only mood. It's completely just mood. And that's what he excels at. You know, it's like when Nietzsche criticizes Wagner, he says Wagner was a master at the miniature mood that he can achieve in particular moments, and he misunderstood himself, he wanted to have instead this grand narrations of redemption and heroism and so on but that wasn't really his talent and in a similar way mr lynch misunderstood himself so i understand why people don't like his movies as too gimmicky you know yes but it's sort of weird to want to have a perfect artist, right? An artist is always this sort of wonky creature with its own idiosyncrasies and his own strange ideas about what is good about this art and not. And in the end, what we see

is not so much what the artist thinks about himself. I mean, you even have that in Dostoevsky, right? Like the ending of Crime and Punishment is cheesy with this guy going to the camps. but this is not this is not the great quality of the book this is maybe his idea of redemption or something some sort of christian problem that he had yes um but i think i yeah i remember hemmingway's book i think it's called the movable feast where he and someone were talking about dostoevsky and just how badly written it is and yet how manages to how much it manages to move you despite being so badly written you know yeah yeah it is really incredible I think nobody ever did that with me as as he did that you did you really forget that you're right that you're actually reading an artwork which is strange

because like it's so it's not atmospheric all in the sense because the language is so wooden and choppy and all these things but maybe it's because of this very reason that in the end you could just get totally numbed out and and you sort of forget about the artwork that you're in, sort of. Yes, I've heard it said that the only perfect writing is the imperfect. But that's a longer talk, Stefan. I wanted to keep asking you about your favorite movies, if you don't mind. I'll tell you what mine are. It's rare I get a chance to talk with a filmmaker about our favorite movies. So I like Persona and Mulholland Drive and Mauve Sang by Leos Carax. I would say those three used to be my favorite. But then, internet old frog, I hope he doesn't mind me that I keep mentioning him sometimes,

Menaquin on four, pointed out to me Edward Yang's movies. Now this was Taiwanese new cinema. It's kind of Taiwanese take on new wave cinema done in the 80s and early 90s. And I highly recommend to you this movie, A Brighter Summer Day, about Taiwanese youth gangs in 1959 to the next few years or so on. It's a four-hour movie, but it manages to achieve sustained mood without any so-called, let's say, self-conscious, artsy gimmicks of the type that you can accuse David Lynch of using. It's a pure, nostalgic, atmospheric dream state, but achieved kind of low-key without... I highly recommend these movies if you like them. And then I, of course, like Roman Polanski. I don't know if you like this man. I very much enjoy Roman Polanski's movie. Which ones do you like?

Well, the apartment trilogy is amazing to me. The reunion with, you like psychopaths? Well, there you have Catherine Deneuve, a psychopath in modern Paris walking around with, what is it? She has a cat's head in her purse and she's a serial killer of men, you know, cosmetician, psycho, and she's oppressed by her apartment. And there's that, there's The Tenant and Rosemary's Baby. I think that trilogy quite amazing. Have you seen these films by Ken Russell, Devils, these sort of 70s films? No, what is this? It's really amazing. So I was watching these films by Ken Russell recently, and he made this amazing film about about Christianity but also he made films about he you know Women in Love by Lawrence this book yes it's yeah I'm sort of a bit because I don't know I don't know where to

start but these films are sort of what should have happened in the 70s so I think we went to the direction of Apocalypse Now. This sort of movies became very popular and informed the way that sort of movies developed further. But he was sort of making these strange, very gay science films in the 70s about this sort of cultural revolution that was happening, which was very much about this sort of British, Christian, alienation, class struggle. It's really amazing. I was watching them recently. Yes, well, I must watch this. Stefan, I hope you don't mind, I slight change tack, but I want to ask you before we go about any current projects you might have and what you have plans for future for making movie. Yes, so I am currently finishing the Michel Wahlberg film.

That's sort of where all my energy goes to now. And I'm preparing to also enter a war zone and make a film with e-girls and soldiers in a location I cannot disclose yet. So I'm very interested in what you are doing now, also in this secretive place. Yeah, so that's what I'm working on. Yes, well, this is very good, but I wanted to ask you, going back to what we were talking when the honeypot thing and the Michelle Wellebeck thing it is true what would you say to the following not attack on you but but let's say criticisms that it's true that these men like Wellebeck sign away their rights to their image to you and they're not 18 year old girls that you can accuse of being naive they are grown men they are of sound mind they They sign away their rights, and then they change their minds.

And so I think you're perfectly within your rights to publish this material because these men don't have the right to walk back on the agreements they made with you. That being said, Stefan, that being said, why would you say to someone who might criticize saying, well, Stefan is very wise because he understands human psychology, and he preys on certain types of right-wing men who are self-delusional, who think that they are going to be the ones not to be like the last guy, who are not going to be honey-potted, who are going to look great on cinema, on film, fucking girls, or look awesome. And they're not the dumb kind of right-wing populist type. They are avant-garde, Celine Nietzschean types. And you prey on that vanity, Stefan. and you then put them into a corner

where they actually show themselves to be buffoons. Now, I'm not saying I agree with that, but what would you say to someone who said that? Yeah, maybe I'm delusional because that's not how I see it. I think there's like, in this concrete case of Michel Belvac, I think there's a great desire in him to point at a Shylock, to point at a Faustian, you know, like it's Shakespeareans, you know, like I'm the Jew who like made him sign his contract. He's my victim. And he needs to be a victim. So I can't help but psychologize him and absolutely not take him seriously. And of course he cries a lot and he has a lot of hatred for people and he's very afraid of other people. And of course you have these super lame, normal, conservative, boring men who would never find themselves in a situation

where they would sign away their their image to record a porn movie. So these people cannot even imagine going into this situation, to begin with. You know, like, he wanted to expose himself there as an exhibitionist inside of him and I think he's deeply enjoying this whole struggle and I think he's even worried that I will never finish the film because he wants to see his pain and penis on the big screen. This sounds accurate to me, but, Stefan, before we go, I know you say you're working on finishing this movie and then maybe Warzone movie with your e-girls and soldiers. That could be very exciting for me. What you see as maybe, if you don't mind, do you have any ideas of future movies or what the future of film could be? I know that's kind of hokey question.

I don't mean to put you on spot, but do you have idea? I like, I want two things. I want to make unusual dream state movies eventually based on horror film, and I want on a separate, maybe a different identity of mine, I'll tell you, to a different pseudonym to make some type of pornography which I don't have fully figured out yet, but it's a kind of pornography that I'm still trying to figure out the psychological trigger sinews of American and the world society. What buttons can I press that will simultaneously access rage registers and let's say erotic turn on registers? I think that would be effective porn. Do you have any, but I have no idea what form that would take yet. Yeah, so I think what is very interesting is that we talked about this before. You shared Schopenhauer with me

and Welbeck is also a great Schopenhauer fan. And Schopenhauer has this strange negating relationship to lust, which of course Nietzsche himself criticized in a very adequate way in Schopenhauer. And I think I am truly this sort of like gay, Nietzschean artist. I'm very happy. I like women. I don't have this problem with lust, all these things. I don't see the suffering of lust as the sort of primal thing. And then you said before in this conversation, I don't really like women and that's maybe a problem. So I would be very interested in sort of diving into this, this sort of character study. So maybe like when I'm reading you or when I'm listening to your radio, I'm always editing in my head, like sort of, so what kind of sentences would I take from this bad persona

and to make them into a fictional character? I'm not asking you to face back or anything like that, but sort of to build on this persona, this sort of porn war zone gods, And it would be a new genre, I think. It would sort of like borrow from Gonzo journalism, Africa Adio, it would be very hyper adventurous. I think also artificial intelligence can greatly help here because you can use these face masks. You know what I mean? Like we, you can, you can, I think this sort of AI gives this opportunity to make people anonymous in a documentary. So before I was always relying on people willing to face back. Sim Kvits wanted to sell himself to the world, therefore he's in front of my camera. Can I ask you this? Sorry, go on. No, Welbeck wants to show his face and his penis,

therefore he's on my camera. But I think now because of AI, you can replace the face. You can make it completely anonymous without removing the reality from a footage because you can track the face so well with AI and stuff. So I think actually for reality movies, for sort of real documentary, real theater, I think the world is opening up now because of AI. Because like, if I would, for example, want to film a very interesting, genius hedge fund guy, he would never allow that because it would be too secretive for him, too dangerous. How is this different from like on OnlyFans, people already use masks, you know, sometimes, so, you know. Well, I mean, of course, the difference is only a gradient. I mean, you can call Balzac a pornographer writer

because he writes about prostitutes and all these things. Same with Dostoevsky. I think the difference is in the complexity and how interesting it is. So there's no fundamental difference between what I do and reality TV. Well, I have to say, you do pretty good reality TV. It's very funny. And before we go, I wanted to ask you, now that you mentioned Sinkovich, for the audience again, This is the big time art dealer from Los Angeles who is profiled in one of the episodes of Kirak, episode eight. I found very entertaining profile of kind of, yeah, again, studying modern vanity, modern delusion, but does he understand how he came off on camera? What was his response to your final product? Does he hate you now? No, we are very good friends. I think he didn't really like the movie.

He didn't share it with his friends, but I think he also noticed that people really appreciated the film for its honesty. And of course he knows he's charming and super funny and his language is so beautiful. The guy has definitely a language talent and oratory talent, it's amazing. I think he disliked the art criticism, like me critiquing his taste. He didn't appreciate that. But we also have a friendship. So when I finished the film, he really complimented me. He said like, you worked on this film for three years. It's always amazing when a film does finish. Like he produced Rekim for a Dream. So he knows how difficult it is to produce films. I have to tell you, I have friends who like the new Aronofsky movie. I do not, I forget what it's called, but I found it to be a poor, you know,

like one of these after hours types, Scorsese urban, urban quirky adventure, like urban weird jungle movies. And I found it to be very formulaic and rote. I don't know. Have you seen Aronofsky's new movie? No, I mean, I even disliked Breaking for a Dream. It's too sort of like Guidebore, sort of like this commercialization of French media philosophy. It happened a lot. I mean, it's sort of, I think it's sort of part of like movies like The Game and maybe Fight Club. And I mean, I think The Matrix is a masterpiece and Fight Club is nice, but it's all about this sort of, this sort of negation of the world through media theory and capitalism. Yes. I don't really like it. It's sort of against my sort of Nietzschean, I don't know, gay science principles, if you know what I mean.

Yes, do you have, now that you say Simcovic, you are still your friend and I'm kind of surprised by that, but you have good relationships with most of the subjects of your movies? I mean, obviously, Wellerbeck at least pretends to be your opponent, but you have good relationships with most of the rest of them? Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I think so. I think everybody who sort of like sticks to the process enjoys the sort of true finding that happens through these films, how pretentious that may sound. But of course, there's also like typical avant-garde infighting, like Tarek Ami, like one of the heroes in my films. We are not really on speaking terms now. I hope that will get better in the future. I mean, you have the typical sort of art collective bullshit, always.

You know, it's all part of life. Well, Tariq was one of someone who worked with you. I mean, the people you subject to this process, like Simkovic, but regardless- Yeah, so maybe it sounds silly, but I also see Simkovic as an actor. Like, I think we both know that he's playing himself. When I point the camera at him, he also starts to play his own character. He's not a subject in that sense. It's not neutral, you know what I mean? So of course it's very obvious that Tarek and other people like Gini really play a role which is even further away from their actual personality. I never consider people to be sort of like me to be a fly on the wall journal, if you know what I mean. I would like to encourage you, if you don't mind before we go, to target somebody, it's no longer relevant,

but there's a documentary about Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin who are these American- I love it, I saw it, yeah. Yes, they come off as the most lame people imaginable. And I think that if you did a few profiles of the major totems, the major icons, not just of the left but of, let's say, GOP establishment too in the United States, subjected to your particular kind of humor, I think could be quite a success and quite funny, you know? Yeah, that would be amazing. I don't think they have the openness to be interested in that. Because in the end, you can say everything you want about Champagne Elite people like Stefan Simkiewicz, But they do fall in this sort of liberal tradition of openness and self-critique and laughing about yourself and all these things.

Which I think is still a big propaganda advantage that the left has over the right. Yes. In the end the right is, I'm not talking about all the problems with the left, I'm talking about sort of like there's still this sort of like open instinct there. And I think people like you and maybe me are sort of pushing this a little bit on the right also to be more open, but it is very different. I think it's one of the greatest weaknesses of the right currently. Of course, you know, just I don't have long term, I don't have great expectations of prospects of the right in the US because they refuse mostly to address this question of what it takes to change cultural taste. And without that changing of taste, nothing really matters. They want, before, and I'm going to say this last

and then you answer this as you wish, Stefan, and then we should go because the hour, the late hour is pressing upon us, but you're welcome back anytime on Caribbean rhythms. But I'll just say to you this that I keep repeating ad nauseam, which is that you cannot change long-term political prospects just on factual disputation. So, who was the real racist, is a classic example, or what really happened with such and such historical event or JFK or something factual like that, or as the new reactionaries foolishly want that they will convince leftist intellectuals and liberal intellectuals that black people are really low IQ and that will change everything. And fundamentally, that changes nothing because people don't act based on facts, they act based on moral valuations

and the root of moral valuations ultimately I think is taste, which is shaped by very deep unexpected things having to do with artistic experiences, aesthetic experiences, sexual tastes and so on. And so the right is basically lost at sea, they think by making essays and such, they don't have almost for the most part with very few exceptions, any idea of the dimension in which you are operating and talk about, Stefan, you know? Yeah, that's true. And then, maybe, but I already think that you consider me to be naive because we talked about this before relating to Renaissance and sort of a new messianosis, but there is this sort of like weird thing happening with techne, which of course Nick Land is also talking about sort of you have acceleration

And it's sort of like eating up this whole liberal autonomous art making idea completely, like at its root or something. And I think somewhere in this chaos, you unlock certain Dionysian strange energies that will, even if you don't, if you want to keep it at bay, sort of erupt and manifest themselves. It's simply a result of sort of maybe the arrogance of technological progress through AI and all these things. And one of the things I'm thinking about recently, and I will probably not be able to formulate it very sharply because it's very late for me and I have to wake up in three hours because my kids will wake me up, but this sort of constant entropy that you see in culture, which of course Nietzsche discusses when he sort of critiques Euripides and Bakke

as a sort of a lesser version of earlier tragedies, because it's already irrational, explaining characters, it wants to rationalize stuff and you have to sort of process. And, but I sort of feel that in this sort of hyper rationalization of everything and this sort of super technological world we live in, you create a new sort of weird dreamlike state, which is something that I feel almost coming upon me when I make these movies or when I'm having all these sort of like intellectual kind of conversations. Yes. And so I sort of feel that we're going through some sort of weird portal and then on the other side, something new will come out of it. This is all a bit vague and spherical, but. Well, Stefan, let me interrupt you right there because in your movies, you say you like this debate

and rationalist element where you have people engage in kind of long-winded explanations of their ideologies but you achieve maybe unwittingly and despite yourself, you do achieve a kind of dream state that is true But I don't know if that's because of the content of the logic of what people are saying. There's a kind of standoffish absurdity, and I say that in the best way. There's a standoffish, humorous absurdity that you achieve in your movies. And Stefan, I must run right now as the midnight hour close pressing upon me and upon you too, and we must go. So I hope you don't mind if I cut our talk short. But thank you for all the good work you were doing for the world, Bap. Yes, I am an avatar of the god Vishnu and you are an avatar of the god Hanuman or the other way around.

Let me be the monkey god. Very good. Listen, Stefan, please come back anytime on Caribbean Rhythms. You're welcome and I, with great eagerness, look forward to your further films. But we must go right now. Is this okay? Thank you so much. See you soon. Very good. Until next time, Bap out.