BOOK LAUNCH Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde (2024)
Dialogues on CoreCore & the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde gathers the work of over forty artists, writers, and philosophers to address the trajectories of the underground avant-garde digital art-world. A variety of topics and visual styles are represented in this anthology, but particular attention is paid to CoreCore, the DIY experimental filmmaking meta-trend which emerged on TikTok in the dusk of 2020. In part an anthology of critical and experimental essays, in part a curatorial artbook, in part a volume of conference proceedings, this text invites the viewer to explore the grassroots conference of a particular cybercultural moment.
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“None of this actually demanded any explanation. Commentary is an interaction, not an unfolding of secret meanings.” — Louis Morelle, Notes for a Préface on CoreCore
It is almost inappropriate to create a book like this — a book whose static, physical, two dimensional frame cannot but violate its twin foci of (1)CoreCore, i.e. video work and film, which is composed of movement; and (2) the online, which is both in perpetual movement and requires no external, IRL supplement in order to be interpreted. A book is necessarily somewhat gatekeeping and archivization. We can’t afford to give the book away, and it can’t be updated after we print it. The interaction already happened — it happened on December 2nd.
So why make this book?
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Whatever CoreCore is, there is now a 220-page book about it, containing 40+ contributors. You can read more about the book and get a copy from the store. The book features the transcriptions and written contributions that were featured at a conference in December 2023 All Things are Nothing to Us which was organized by the editors of this volume, Onty & On My Computer. Here, speakers, both live and online, proceeded to discuss this movement or phenomenon that was being addressed as CoreCore. This idea came to Becoming when Onty submitted their film Ultra-Anxiety Core 2023: The Anti-Authenticity Sequence, which responded to, explored and elaborated on this idea of CoreCore, and the release of this film ended up being of the definitive moments for Becoming. We had initially asked Onty to write a description for their work, and soon after we received a 5k word essay on Hegel & Schlegel and Speculative Irony. It is unsurprising that six-months later such a beautifully designed tome has materialised, as it speaks to the brute force of Onty’s work ethic and creative streak, but to have helped, with the support of OMC, a network of 40+ people, from Crisis Acting to Louis Morelle and John Robin Bold, come together to have a dialogue about CoreCore speaks to something else entirely. There is something really cool about CoreCore, and about the kind of conversations that seem to be happening about it, and, perhaps most importantly, the kind of art that CoreCore either describes, imagines, or instigates, is worth the attention it is receiving.
Right now, the only way to catch up with all of this is with this 220-page book that is as much a provocation as it is a volume of essays, with a lot of care and thought given to the typography, texture and selection of works. The book covers everything from the hopeful, the dissentful, to the speculative—a complete para-academic round up of the entire triad: core- / -core / and Core-Core.
Dialogues on CoreCore and the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde (2024) Onty & Dylan Smith (Ed.s). Nicosia/Berlin: Becoming.
ISBN: 978-9925-7984-X-X
Dimensions: A5 (14.8x21cm)
220 pages
Full colour design
ft. 20+ artists
€25