Showing posts with label william chaffin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label william chaffin. Show all posts

Thursday, August 21, 2014

The Anti-Selfie Collection Vol. 1


Nothing wrong with a few self-portraits. A culture obsessed with self-portraits however may push a once honest and engaging aesthetic into wince-inducing vulgarity & irritating narcissism.
Enter the Anti-Selfie. A tiny artistic protest against the overuse of the self-portrait or something even greater perhaps? An inadvertent homage to Magritte's surrealistic and prophetic genius? An aesthetic revolution of palimpsest-like proportions?
All of the above?
And although it's too soon to tell about its social and artistic ramifications-the *anti-selfie* surely deserves its place among the current social media oeuvre or at the very least, a gentle reminder of our growing self-obsession & lack of overall awareness concerning it.


-William Chaffin





J. Wold





C. Cogdill

K. Ford

J. Chaffin

W. Chaffin

S. Akright

M. Chaffin

M. Stuber

The Ghost & The Starkness: Chad Cogdill's Haunting Photographs of Kansas City



by Chad Cogdill



Chad Cogdill is a ghost and he photographs Kansas City within the metaphoric Gaussian blur of this amorphous tempo. He stalks it's hulking, concrete creatures with the same intensity that a Zen master stalks peacefulness. His best images speak a multi-layered perversity with our urban surroundings and purvey the dichotomy of the city as a constant & immovable force and the city as a slowly decaying corpse. This Titan-like struggle happening entirely within the small confines of a digital light box.

Old world meets computer chips. That Cogdill's world. A world which dissipates into line, color (or most likely lack of it) contrast and geometric shapes. The ghost & the starkness. An artist looking for something in the silence and distance...

by Chad Cogdill

Cogdill's lens captures the living of the non-living through the entropy evident in it's scars & it's persistent grayscale. His work culminating in a reimagining of a once-great city through a visual re-mapping of it's quiet downtown.

He wanders...shoots and wanders some more. His camera always the focus and contemplation and the city his muse.





Kansas City as muse.
Kansas City as phoenix-rising.
Kansas City in all it's beauty and it's unusual silence.

Chad Cogdill is it's ghost with a camera and his poetry is exposed one frame at a time.

-William Chaffin




Chad Cogdill's next photography exhibition is at the Plenum Space Gallery (504 E. 18th St, Kansas City) onSeptember 5, 2014

View Chad's work online here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/chad_cogdill/

Thursday, August 7, 2014

A Properly Religious Opening





We're a blog unless you find yourself saying "They're a blog."
*Then* we AREN'T a blog.


Ok.

We're a band sometimes but not enough to say that we are ONLY a band. Besides-we mostly just make noise/drone/ambient experimental music so that we could make t-shirts that everyone would wear. That's not entirely true...but we do love t-shirts.

We're a social media thing. Whatever the fuck that means. We would just as soon throw our phones into the fire and start over with old composition books and copy machines. Having a blog is cheaper and it reaches a wider audience-most of the time.

You know what? We still like the compact disc. There. We said it.
What is so great about vinyl? Sure it possesses a better sound quality & it gives it's owner instant hipster credentials but do we care about that? We most certainly do not. Although that isn't entirely true because we actually do care a little bit about everything. Furthermore we find it sad that the whole hipster thing was hijacked and hacked apart by self-hating hipsters & soda pushing corporate rock sponsors.

Here's something: Women in fedoras carry an unspeakable sadness that cannot be completely masked or forgotten. This means that you can trust a woman in a fedora but only in the morning when the crust is in her eyes, the coffee is brewing and the saints start to whisper.

Too weirdly poetic? Reaching? Looking for attention?

Remember what David Mamet wrote and Anthony Hopkins said in that movie about killing a bear: "Never feel sorry for a man that owns a plane."
We don't and we won't.


We are a brand. Just like any other brand. Every thing is a fucking brand anymore. This is both good and bad and we wouldn't presume to have nearly enough knowledge or wit about us to "tear down those walls"
It's the fucking Internet. It's fucking 2014. You turn it on and it turns you on.


We write about stuff we like: Music. Art. Fashion. Sex. Food.
Mostly about music because I guess we like music best...or too much writing about sex is gauche.

We can all agree that we collectively have dreams about our teeth falling out.

If by some stone's throw chance in hell we ever get really popular and suddenly valuable - we promise to sell this blog to the first business that offers us at least 300k.
So-up front-you know our lowest "selling out" point. You know right from the beginning that we have a price. We assume you have a price also. Would you clean the toilets in a laxative testing facility four days a week for 5 million a year?
Yeah...so would we.


So...

No matter how many beautiful words we can string together---in the end we would rather be laying on a beach & sipping umbrella drinks.
Or, at the very least getting paid actual money and the amount we feel we're truly worth.
Wouldn't you?

Don't take advice from a blog is our first advice.

Our second piece of advice goes:

Don't start a band. Make a film.
Don't make music. Music is for the culturally vapid & weak.
Film is for the brave & brash.
Music isn't anywhere near pure anymore. It's rotten to it's bloated core. Watch the corporate interests scramble to repackage it & polish a turd. It's a waste!!!!
Rock & roll is dead and good riddance!

Our third and final piece of advice which will stick with you all your life is simple and comes straight from the soulful echo burned into our brain from Otis Redding's beautiful baritone... Try a little tenderness

Because...

Everything that is loved & everything that will be truly loved will eventually see an end. Nothing lasts. Every dream is destined for that fixed & forever sleep.

How's that for an existential crisis?

True Love is Ugly.
See ya soon.