Made in collaboration with Annika Kuhlmann, Peace Core (surround) is an immersive, multichannel video installation of infinite duration. Its system reassembles in real time American television footage broadcast in the moments before September 11, 2001, so that no definitive edit can close this historical eve.
The algorithm is trained on the compositional methods of vaporwave and early corecore edits on TikTok. Digital nostalgia becomes a critical instrument: the work connects the end of Pax Americana, the “War on Terror,” and the crushing of the Tamil independence movement in Sri Lanka, the country the artist’s family left.
Image: Christopher Kulendran Thomas, Peace Core (surround), 2026, installation view at Kunstmuseum Bonn. Photo: David Ertl; image courtesy the artist.