Photography by James Buenavides
Meet Artist Phillip Fillastre of Corecult
Corecult is a design installation cooperative based out of San Francisco that brings curatorial sensibilities to nightlife. With members from a variety of artistic and creative backgrounds Corecult bridges the divide between DIY rave aesthetics and the white walled galleries of the art world. Fresh off a series of Halloween parties, Phillip Fillastre spoke with us about the cooperative’s upcoming work for New Years at the new Gray Area creative space in SF and the their latest collaboration for the party Basel Honey!
Can you tell us a little bit about what Corecult does and how you got started? Jacob Sperber (Honey Soundsystem) and Jorge Portillo (Hard French) knew that I was a public school art teacher bored out of my damn skull and was looking for things to make. They were co-hosting Deviants — the Folsom Street Fair closing party — and they asked if I was interested in helping create visuals for the event. We weren’t working under one name at that point, but that was the first time I worked with Kate Nakamura who is still one of the most talented artists in our group. Jeff McMahan and Lionel Dulce started as friends who just wanted to help out but have been with me since I started. Colton Long started coming by to help out last-minute and has since moved up as a more permanent member of the group. James Buenavides is the latest addition. He keeps our shit organized, which is essential. Still, we wouldn’t be anywhere without Jacob Sperber. From that first Deviants party onward, Jacob has been our biggest background cheerleader. He’s the one party promoter and DJ in this city that gives a shit about telling a story, and he supports others who want to add their own chapter.
How do you fit in or not with the SF music scene? What kinds of events do you like to do? I was first exposed to what I considered to be “good” electronic music shortly after moving to the Bay Area. San Francisco is a lot of things, but it’s a big house music city. When I first moved here, I had the most fun I’d ever had in my life going out to alternative queer spaces like Honey Soundystem. Some were underground, some just under the radar, but all pretty heavily dominated by house and techno. We still operate primarily in those spaces today. I like to do events where we have a personal relationship with the promoter or a strong love of the talent. That’s when we go batshit and put in 400 person-hours in two weeks on top of working full-time jobs. We work really fucking hard when we’re excited about attending as much as creating.
What’s your process for conceptualizing what an installation design will look like? Recently, we’ve been in the habit of rolling a 36″x96″ piece of butcher paper out onto a table top and scribbling on that all night. We brainstorm some thematics that are important to us and will support the style of the talent then develop a list of elements we could possibly make. After more discussion we whittle those down into the best ideas. We spend a lot of time researching what’s happening elsewhere — from fashion shows to concerts to galleries — as we ideate.
What are you looking to put together for the Art Basel event? What’s the mood, feeling or look you’re going for? I am currently looking into repurposing existing elements to create new pieces reflecting our past work. Rather than create something totally new, I want to revitalize and fully-execute ideas that weren’t as complete as I would have liked them to be. I’m also looking forward to showing some photos of the past few years’ events. We’ve been working a lot with mirrored surfaces this year and I’d like to continue that theme in Miami. I don’t want to divulge too much — we like keeping our media presence minimal until the work goes up.
What’s your sign? I’m a Scorpio
How do you find your sign affecting the work that you do with CoreCult? I blame it for coming off as a total bitch over email.
