Degringolade

Fletcher, Jerome (2007) Degringolade. PCAD Press/Arnolfini, Plymouth, Devon, UK. ISBN 978-0-9557491-0-0

Abstract / Summary

This book was the outcome of two commissioned residencies undertaken in 2007. The first was as Visiting Writer for Arnolfini’s exhibition ‘Pale Carnage’, curated by Martin Clark (and including works by Cerith Wynn Evans, Ulla von Brandenburg, Nyobushi Araki, Mark Leckey et al). During the residency, Fletcher devised a blog (www.arnolfini.org.uk /about/ arnolfinivisitingwriter.php), gallery tour, workshop and text performance (in collaboration with dancer Imogene Newland and with sound track by sonic artist, Paul Bull). The second was as Writer in Print at Plymouth College of Art and Design. This was one of a series of Writer in Print residencies curated by PCAD’s Academic Leader of Critical and Contextual Studies, Larry Lynch, and designed for writers whose work is affiliated with visual arts practices. It allowed Fletcher to work closely with the College’s Printing Department to research a variety of typographical strategies. Outcomes comprised this book, a research presentation, an artist’s talk and an exhibition of Fletcher’s textwork at PCAD’s Viewpoint Gallery. Work achieved during both residencies formed part of Fletcher’s ongoing investigation of contemporary notions of decadence (see Outputs 2 and 3). His interests centred on conception of decadence as a ‘falling’, on how decadence can be produced and played out through the collision of art forms, and on decadence’s focus on the highly wrought fragment at the expense of the integrated whole.

The book seeks to address these interests in part through its investigation of the spatiality of writing (especially the relationship between text and the page or the frame), and its visuality (in this case, the way in which a text may promote a vertical/falling reading as well as a horizontal reading).

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