Where do you begin with a book like this; a book containing dialogues on a micro contemporary avant-garde video art movement on social media called “CoreCore”? It is, as “0nty”, the lead editor said, more of a toll booth; this book ensures no possiblity for the artists to be cut out of the loop when the academics arrive en scene.

This book follows on from the proceedings of "All Things are Nothing to Us", a symposium on CoreCore and the Contemporary Online Avant-Garde, held on December 2nd. 2023, at the School of Visual Arts, NYC; organized by 0nty and OnMyComputer (Dylan Smith). The book contains a mass of visual art from upward of 140 contributors. Monumental book.

CoreCore is the term that is associated with a particular practice of film-making (read arranging moving-images) that has emerged through social media apps like TikTok. Taking its name from the -corification of aesthetics in the Tumblr-era (fairycore, cottagecore), CoreCore usually involves, as Louis Morelle writes in the book, images concatenated against each other. Lucas Ferraço Nassif theorized that, like the Japanese concept of Ma, something jumps out from the gaps in-between images: "CoreCore is two words, but its the same word, and there is a mirror-stage between the two cores: who is going to confirm what the core is?".

This book brings together artists and theorists who were either part of the movement, or fans of the movement, close to it, and so on, to create an anthology which explores the movement on its own terms, and ensures that no academic can ever discuss CoreCore without citing this book, and thus ensuring the underground their place in the discussion.