S t u d i o F i v e B e e k m a n
sound and intermedia gallery
The Discarded Songs
a multi-media sound and art installation
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays
2 - 6 PM
April 3 - 19, 1997
Stephen Tunney is primarily a painter known more for his work as a songwriter and novelist. En the world of music, he works and releases material under the pseudonym Dogbowl. The seven CD's he gas made under these name have been critically acclaimed in France, Japan, the UK, Germany, and in the United States. He has also toured extensively in these countries. He is an original founding member of King Missile (Dog-Fly Religion), and has performed with Bongwater.
Stephen Tunney, as a writer, released his first novel, "Flan", in 1992. It has published by Four Walls Eight Windows. He is currently revising his second novel, "White Picket Fence", which is forthcoming. As a painter, his works have been featured at the Limner Gallery in Soho. More recently, he had a solo exhibition of paintings at "The Wall", a gallery at 44 West 4th Street.
The Discarded Songs will be has first multi-media installation, and will combine all three of his artistic directions.
Notes on The Discarded Songs
The project consists of the discarded, brought together to create a whole. This is accomplished by taking the songwriter's work-tapes, the crude "notebooks" with which Stephen Tunney wrote songs, and overlaying several at a time, merging them into a single sonic aura.
The material was recorded over the course of ten years, using cassette tape recorders. Much of it was later worked into songs that appeared on Stephen Tunney's Dogbowl albums. All of it was improvised, most of it was discarded, like forgotten thoughts, with bits used here and there, but never presented as a whole.
Individually, the tapes are highly repetitive, with constant interruptions as Tunney announces the names of the chords for the chords for his own reference. Yet when several are played together, using the multi-speaker set-up at Studio Five Beekman, the result is an astounding amalgamation of sound, completely dreamlike, sometimes disturbing, and often highly melodic.
Merged side-by-side with the sound installation are several hundred of "the discarded drawings". These exist as small boxed drawings done with sumi ink upon long sheets of Japanese rice paper that hang from ceiling to floor like oversized strips of cassette tape. The images are each approximately ten inches by ten inches and, like the music, seemingly disconnected to each other. But once put together they form a whole, a visual accompaniment to the re-emergence of improvised thoughts via music captured on cassette tape.
Quotes from the Press
"Songwriter extraordinaire..." Melody Maker September, 1993
"Tit (an Opera) was an unbelievable work of immense beauty." New Route April, 1992
"...[Flan had] a sincerity and energy that few storytelling records can match." RockpoolMay, 1992 "the silver tongued and multi-faceted Dogbowl...fun for the whole family. Genius!" Melody Maker August, 1992
"...Stephen Tunney, a groovy world-maker who has invented an adolescent fantasia mindwrap that is all his own." L.A Weekly 1991
on Flan, the novel
"...a novel in the rogue tradition of Don Quixote and Naked Lunch ...an improvisatory, highly visual writing style..." Review of Contemporary Fiction Fall, 1993
"...a great American campfire story...you almost want to read it aloud...Tunney is the most cheerfully demented storyteller/musician/painter in America.." The Boston Phoenix Literary Section March, 1993
"...a totally original work..." Spectrum Weekly January, 1993 "fascinating...a vision Bosch and Dali would have been proud of." O Magazine London, June, 1993
For more information:
web site: www.dogbowl.com
