Santiago Arciniegas

...The stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.

“Softkore” is an exploration of obsession, identity, and privilege. Over the course of five years, Santiago embarked on a journey rooted in his prior fascination with the “emo boy” image, seeking to reconstruct and discover that assumed yet unexplored identity.

At its core, the project delves into the concept of obsession, addressing the beginning of an artistic trajectory and confronting cringe, tropes, and clichés. As Santiago revisits his emo past, the project becomes an exploration journey of the enduring power of the emo image and the search for the genre’s own extreme transgressions.

This project was developed through two key elements. First, the taking of carefully recreated photographs that acknowledge how the adolescent obsession with the emo aesthetic was a privileged and targeted window for self-expression. Second, the online distribution of the images, where emotional responses and encountered frictions were recorded.

All is compiled into an AMV video, as those created during the emo heyday, which functions as an emotional exorcism of images and their responses. Moreover, the album narrates the adventures and misadventures of the work, the breakdowns in the process, the annotations and observations, as well as the compilation and citation of materials that served as a reference. It presents research that accumulates dozens of individuals investigated.

Visitors can interact with the album, creating their own interpretation of “Softkore” and establishing a tangible connection with the obsessive search for identity, its loss, and its reconstruction.