Before Bent Zine, was Bent Zine, it was originally “Bendzine” something my friend Bryan Washington came up with, in 2015.
I was 25 and living in Oxford, Ohio. I was a college drop-out whose dream of “something more” burst out of me in the form of snorting m***y (which was probably m***, tragic but what isn’t nowadays), working as a line cook at the shittest restaurant in town, and reading voraciously about philosophy, art, and culture.
During that time I meet a fellow traveler who sans m***y and cook job from hell, saw beyond the basic bitch-ness that was Ohio. That was “Bendzine” editor Bryan Washington aka BWASH.
So instead of the celebratory issue #10, let’s do a deep cut for the real ones that caught the vibe Wayyyy before it got cool. What follows is selections from 2015 Bendzine Issue #1…
Design by Bryan Washington, 2015
"Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable, and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them."
— Brian Eno
“Currently working on a series of lyric posters. This is the second one I made for the song “Reverence” by Jesus and Mary Chain from their album Honey is Dead. I really want to work more in this mixed media realm/I love how images looked when they are photocopied. I think we can do something like this for BENT” (2015) Designed by Bryan Washington
