Annihilation Core, Inherited Lore

Cute eyes, thirst trap hotties, cosy rugs, soft pillows, and adorable trinkets – beyond these plush comforts and a meticulous attention to decor, an unsettling atmosphere lurks. The popular online aesthetic operates in the service of the exaltation of war culture. Used as a lure to attract, the kawaii-fication of violence seduces and gamifies those who encounter it, welcoming the misogynistic, supremacist and racist neo-ideologies it seeks to glorify.

Influenced by gamer-girl and otaku room aesthetics, and drawing from events such as NATO’s inaugural gaming tournament – where global participants competed while engaging with alliance experts—the installation accelerates these online subcultures toward an undesirable yet likely future.

From a remote-controlled military operations desktop station, amidst plushies and UAV drone models, visitors can explore the evolving fusion of the military-entertainment complex and gaming culture, and their entanglements with digital militarism and modern armies’ recruiting strategies.

Noura Tafeche

Noura Tafeche is a visual artist, onomaturge and independent researcher whose practice moves across archival methods, laboratory-based processes, video, installation, neologisms and drawing.

She graduated in New Media Art from the Brera Academy, dedicated to the fine arts, with a particular focus on net.art. However, her most formative experience has been The Influencers festival in Barcelona.

Her research explores visual culture and its techno-political entanglements, with a particular emphasis on digital militarism, online aesthetics, internet hyper-niches and non-Anglophone meme cultures.

She also examines the use of synthetic images in institutional neo-propaganda strategies. Her research project The Politics of Rendering was awarded the Italian Council 2025–2026 grant by the Italian Ministry of Culture.

She has exhibited, lectured, and led laboratories at Aksioma (Ljubljana), Medialab Matadero (Madrid), transmediale (Berlin), Disruption Network Lab (Berlin), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur), Impakt (Utrecht), Foto Colectania (Barcelona), C/O Berlin (Berlin), Design Museum (Helsinki), Tainan Art Museum (Tainan), Tomorrow Maybe (Hong Kong), The Wrong Biennale (online), Aarhus Kunsthal (Aarhus), Triennale Milano (Milano), Pirelli Hangar Bicocca (Milano), Mattatoio (Rome), Dutch Art Institute (Arnhem), Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam), and the European Union Representative Centre (Al Quds, Palestine).