2008core [live] is a very personal project. In the panic of 2025, I’ve grown a new perspective on my childhood. Do recessions force creativity, or does collective pain platform authenticity? In 2008 I would watch Cartoon Network at the crack of dawn while my dad still slept. In 2008 I always had my Game Boy with Pokemon strapped on my hip. In 2008 I started l learned “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd on the Guitar. In 2008 Sillybandz entered the meta and ruined elementary schools around the country. 2008 was fire. For me.

Of course, while I was stacking my wrist with animal rubber bands, playing Pokémon, and watching Cartoon Network, adults, even parents around me, were entering financial ruin. I can’t help but make a connection to that time, TikTok and Instagram full of “Brain-Rotting” content that is somehow funnier than SNL, or the global atrocities that happen blatantly, the Ugly Dollz we once collected, we have now become. Screens like Oxy’s, Signals of Faith are found through consumption.

Recessions offer some blissful ignorance. The masochistic spend—we have no money, so let's spend more money— creativity depends on blissful ignorance. The selfish creation formed through a rejection of truth.
Hopefully, we can find our creative ignorance soon.