TV Stack

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photo taken by Nikki Volpicelli for an article in Jump Magazine

The Dream Oven was a dream exhibition that took place in a house, as well as a few other alternative spaces in Northeast Philly (generally the Fishtown and East Kensington neighborhoods of Philadelphia). Started in January 2011, it hosted a vast array of local artists and touring acts from around the world through out the years on through to the end of 2014. Its main dream laborer, Marshall James Kavanaugh, used the space to build a living novel that navigated the ongoing narrative of dream punk. Audience members and performing artists became characters in these collaborative vignettes that explored the collective subconscious of what is “the now”. Creating happenings and cosmic manifestations, the red-blue tie-dyed ambiance got a lot of “This reminds me of the 60s!” comments, but always maintained the argument, “No, this is now! This is our time! This is what our generation looks like! This is how we dream!”.

THE TV STACK was always a main centerpiece of these dream exhibitions. It provided Kavanaugh and his audience a release from the typical punk show, giving them more conversational elements to discuss and process. Through the ongoing whir of static, ecstatic visions were had. Through out the years many

different video artists were featured on the various screens, placed in varying arrangements and sometimes with as many as 50 TVs or as little as 1, standing sometimes as tall as fifteen feet from the ground up. All of these TVs were your standard CRT found in thrift stores and on the street, sometimes broken and refashioned into lightboxes, other times covered in collaged images contributing to a wholly psychedelic experience for all.

Jesse Engaard
Homeopathic Television

Visual material gleaned from daytime television destroyed with analog processing equipment and matched with distorted toy sounds in a hypnotic sensory overload meant to develop immunity to advertising and cultural programming in the viewer. Installed in February 2014.