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Sean Coggins, Blackhole
Opens Friday February 20, 7pm
Artist’s talk February 21, 4pm.
“If subcultures represent a really meaningful version of dress up, Black Metal represents the moment when the actors kind of forget they’re on a stage.” - Banks Violette
In F.W.T.B.T. Vancouver based artist Sean Coggins addresses the folklore and semiotics of Black Metal music. From its origins Black Metal has positioned itself against dominant (Christian) ideologies through sounds and images of resistance and rage. By decontextualizing and layering the output of this subculture rooted in polarities and extremes, Coggins transforms the aesthetics of shock into a structured chaos of iconoclastic feedback.
As Coggins states:
Black Metal subculture is often seen as the amoral manifestation of aimless youth exemplified by symbolism of death and decay. If an ostensibly evil author equates an evil audience, then the range of existential options is too easily determined and eliminates the vast sea of contextual grey. Working this thesis in the opposite direction shows that if a black metal band can inspire mayhem, that same cultural mythology can, through an inversion of context, provoke a contemplation that oscillates through cultural signifiers of beauty and cruelty. Black metal makes white noise.