VHS Tape
14 min, 45 sec
Edition of 100
Mark Leckey's video Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is one of the best known and loved works by London-based artist and Northern English emigre, Mark Leckey. A phantasmic and transcendent collage of meticulously sourced and rearranged footage and sound samples spanning three decades of British subculture - from Northern Soul thru '80s Casuals and Acid House rave movement - it may be considered an uncanny premonition of the Hauntological zeitgeist of the digital hellscape that is the first quarter of the 21st century.
Marking the 25th anniversary of its initial release, Leckey has produced a "final version" that takes it back to its origin in the VHS format: an unplayable Ghost Story.
"Fiorucci was made in 1999: the year of Y2K, the year Napster launched, the year of The Blair Witch Report. Everything became available, unlocked in those last moments of the 20th Century; information finally became free, and music became another utility, there were cheap camcorders to go ghost hunting. Oh yeah, I could get nostalgic for that time. Something else happened at the turn of the century; all the expectant novelty promised by a new decade didn't cross the threshold of the 21st Century. Instead, all those cultural movements slowly ground to a halt and events became algorithmic rather than chronological. Time was converted into space (the Millennium Bug was real, the clocks did get fucked up). Suspended in space-time the dancers in Fiorucci are phantoms, moving in great halls dressed in their neck-ruffs, doublet and hose as they join the classic hauntings from The Middle Ages, The Elizabethans, The Late 20th Century." - Mark Leckey
14 min, 45 sec
Edition of 100
Mark Leckey's video Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999) is one of the best known and loved works by London-based artist and Northern English emigre, Mark Leckey. A phantasmic and transcendent collage of meticulously sourced and rearranged footage and sound samples spanning three decades of British subculture - from Northern Soul thru '80s Casuals and Acid House rave movement - it may be considered an uncanny premonition of the Hauntological zeitgeist of the digital hellscape that is the first quarter of the 21st century.
Marking the 25th anniversary of its initial release, Leckey has produced a "final version" that takes it back to its origin in the VHS format: an unplayable Ghost Story.
"Fiorucci was made in 1999: the year of Y2K, the year Napster launched, the year of The Blair Witch Report. Everything became available, unlocked in those last moments of the 20th Century; information finally became free, and music became another utility, there were cheap camcorders to go ghost hunting. Oh yeah, I could get nostalgic for that time. Something else happened at the turn of the century; all the expectant novelty promised by a new decade didn't cross the threshold of the 21st Century. Instead, all those cultural movements slowly ground to a halt and events became algorithmic rather than chronological. Time was converted into space (the Millennium Bug was real, the clocks did get fucked up). Suspended in space-time the dancers in Fiorucci are phantoms, moving in great halls dressed in their neck-ruffs, doublet and hose as they join the classic hauntings from The Middle Ages, The Elizabethans, The Late 20th Century." - Mark Leckey