Mark Leckey

Book excerpt: An illustrated examination of Mark Leckey's celebrated video montage. In 1999, the British artist 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 use, Leckey entwined footage of underground dance and street culture in Britain with audio grifted and recorded in the artist's studio. In this illustrated study, the first comprehensive examination of the work, Mitch Speed argues that by interweaving personal and collective memory, this work gives voice to the complexities of class and cultural transformation during Britain's Thatcherite era. Oscillating between local and expansive resonances, Fiorucci made me Hardcore takes form as a homage, love letter, and work of criticism that eschews analysis, instead incanting the deeper implications of its subject.