In this special rush release episode of The Carousel, I’m joined by legendary movie impresario Hadrian Belove.
Some refer to Hadrian as “the original cancelled man” due to his absurd banishment from CineFamily—the notorious, celebrity-studded LA film enjoyment club—at the cusp of MeToo. Wrong place, wrong time.
But we’re not here to talk about the past. Hadrian was in part responsible for planning this year’s Urbit Assembly in Lisbon, which wrapped last week. In doing so, he brought in KIRAC (Keeping It Real Art Critics) to intermingle with the digital sovereignty nerds that populate the Urbit ecosystem.
KIRAC is a troupe of Dutch YouTube tricksters (although they hate being called that) that mock and interrogate the intelligentsia with brutal honesty, or, more accurately, honest brutality. They’re infamous for persuading Michel Houellebecq to appear in a porn. In response, the world’s greatest writer flipped out, filing a lawsuit blocking release, and writing a whole book about it.
KIRAC is at its best when it’s doing art world subversion. You really fall in love with them when you watch “Stigma,” where Kate Sinha, wife of main-guy Stefan Ruitenbeek, calls an awful diversity artist a “spoiled bitch,” and we get to witness the subsequent struggle session in front of the Dutch art establishment.
However, like Borat and Sam Hyde before them, KIRAC reaches uncomfortable levels of trollishness. See e.g. “Honeypot,” in which they get one of their groupies to have sex with a right wing philosopher—or at least that’s the set up before she rejects him for being “an oaf.”
So how did KIRAC handle Urbit Assembly? Since the video isn’t out yet, we don’t know. All we do know is that Stefan Ruitenbeek purportedly got meningitis and the remaining underlings spread false rumors about a “ketamine orgy” involving certain high ranking members of the dissident fringe. The groupies also poured milk over themselves after a screening in which one of them broke up with her boyfriend on camera.
What does any of this mean? Listen above or watch below.
71. SPECIAL RELEASE - Hadrian Belove