For Mitch Speed, the interweaving of personal and collective memory in Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore gives voice to the complexities of class and cultural transformation during Britain’s Thatcherite era.

In 1999 Mark Leckey released his video-montage Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, a dreamscape vignette that communes with the rapturous promises of youth. Putting archive material to uncanny use, Leckey entwined purloined footage of underground dance and street culture in Britain with sampled and recorded audio. Completed on the eve of mass online file-sharing, Fiorucci is ingrained with memories of subcultures, fleeting, rare and precious.

In this, the first comprehensive study of the work, Mitch Speed argues that by interweaving personal and collective memory, Fiorucci gives voice to class and cultural transformation during the Thatcherite era. Oscillating between local and expansive resonances, it manifests as an homage, a love letter and an incantation.

This title is part of the One Work book series, which focuses on the artworks that have significantly shaped the way we understand art and its history.

112 pages, 21 cm x 15 cm, paper cover, Afterall Books