chapter
Internet Core
networkcultures.org/internetcore/
Internet Core Manifesto
- 1 Against Banality in Digital Art
Post-Internet art has been absorbed by the art market, converting itself into a product within platform capitalism. Internet Core seeks to dismantle this structure, rejecting the dependence on commercial platforms that limit digital experimentation. We reject visual uniformity, the repetition of marketing formulas, art domesticated by platforms. We demand error, dissonance, ruin. We want images that do not adapt completely, that destroy and reconstruct.
- 2 Rupture with the Clearnet
On the Clearnet, artists remain trapped in algorithms designed to maximize consumption and superficial visibility. Internet Core advocates for a digital exodus towards decentralized communities in the Deep Web and Dark Forests, where creativity is not subjected exclusively to market logic.
- 3 -core as a Subversion Strategy
The ‘-core’ suffix has evolved from musical or subcultural styles like hardcore and emo to become a label of ethereal tendencies. Internet Core resignifies it as a method of resistance, a way to navigate the saturation of aesthetics and to hack algorithmic narratives.
- 4 Revival of Subcultures
Subcultures are not dead; they have expanded in the digital sphere. In a context of climate collapse, post-pandemic crisis, the extreme political shift to the right and contradictions of capitalism, Internet Core becomes a space for collective action. Archiving images, constructing -cores, and developing shared visual identities are forms of political and artistic resistance.
- 5 Performativity and Resistance Strategies
Contemporary art still fails to grasp the magnitude of the digital space. Internet Core proposes a new aesthetic and critical performativity that assumes digitality as a battlefield. Visual culture becomes a weapon to dismantle power structures, hack the establishment, and construct new forms of radical imagination.