Since the late 1990s, the work of British artist Mark Leckey has focused on the relationship between popular culture and technology, exploring ideas of youth, social class and nostalgia through sculpture, film, sound and performance.

In Fiorucci made me hardcore, Leckey spliced together archival footage from British dance halls and clubs, chronicling underground dance music in England from Northern Soul in the 1970s to rave in the early 1990s. As an expert on club culture, he reveals how many followers of these musical genres adopted certain clothing brands as rallying signs. His sampling and editing of this footage anticipate the manipulation of digital sources by the YouTube generation. The video evokes nostalgia for a recent past now out of reach, and also demonstrates an obsession with the archive that is central to the artist's work: “I’m a fetishist and I fetishise things,” he says. “I’m drawn to these things and I’m obsessed by them, I have to somehow possess them, because I sense that they possess me. I want a form of reciprocity.” To complement this visual montage, Leckey created sound from a variety of sources, which he then transformed and associated with the appropriated images. Epochs are blended together as visual and audio documents are cross-fertilised to create a timeless whole.

Nicolas Ballet, 2024