Though many people do, I rarely get into a contemplative state at the ends of years. It’s often more of an Autumn thing for me, when the passage of time is so easily witnessed. This year is somehow different, with an unsettling dose of anxiety as I consider what we’re stepping into in 2024. That anxiety is fueled by the advancing, unchecked climate catastrophe, the rise of fascism, and the state of the world at large. We’ll deal with it as best we can. The next few days will be filled with good friends and amazing music … SF v LCD Soundsystem v Breakfast of Champions.
So as I ease as gracefully as I can out of 2023, Mark Leckey’s “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore” serves in the moment as a prompt to meditate on where I’ve been and where I’m going.
A bit about the film that I wrote in partnership with my GPT writing/thinking assistant, Mumbles:
Mark Leckey’s 1999 short film “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore” is a 15-minute documentary-style video montage of three decades of British youth subcultures mainly from late 70s to the late 90s, chronicling their evolution from disco to the rave scene, celebrating the frisson of the big night out. The footage features a procession of people dancing and spinning in what Leckey spoke of as roughly autobiographical work; revealing how club style, music, dancing, and drugs created the momentary highs of youth lives on the fringes of the mainstream. The meticulously compiled found footage, comprised of club scenes, dancing figures, music tracks, and attendees lost in the rhythm of the music, paints a nostalgia-infused portrait of the golden years of British nightlife culture; ranging from Northern Soul dance floors to the raves and the casual culture of the time. The passage of time is pronounced within Leckey’s film oozing nostalgia and melancholy, as does the recounting of non-permanence, that nothing lasts and the freedom of the night inevitably gives way to dawn lending it with an almost eerie, spectral quality.
