Code: Damp
Regular price
€17.50
21st century
A01=Sophie Sleigh-Johnson
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
anthropology
art
aura
Author_Sophie Sleigh-Johnson
autobiographies
automatic-update
belief
biographies
biography
business
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HPN
Category=HRQX
Category=JBCC1
Category=JFCA
Category=QDTN
cinema
collection
comedy
COP=United Kingdom
culture
Delivery_Pre-order
demons
economics
education
entertainment
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
essay
essays
feminism
film
gender
happiness
healing
historical
history
history books
inspirational
intuition
journalism
Language_English
music
new age
occult
occult books
PA=Not yet available
philosophy
philosophy books
pop culture
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Forthcoming
psychology
sci-fi
self help
self improvement
social science
sociology
sociology books
softlaunch
spiritual books
spirituality
technology
voodoo
writing
Product details
- ISBN 9781915672070
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 130 x 197mm
- Publication Date: 12 Nov 2024
- Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
An alternative occult and esoteric history of England told through one of its most popular cultural forms: the comedy sitcom.
Code: Damp is a sometimes-comedic field report that charts an esoteric code hidden within the twin poles of 1970s sitcoms Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Outlining how past cultural patterns condensate and repeat through technology, time is shown to be a damp condensation seeping through the centuries and out onto the telly.
Interspersed with the author's own photographs, prints, Holsten Pils cans, local newspaper entries and carrier bags, as well as a whole host of other characters, the work seems an antiquarian's conceit that takes time travel as a metaphoric methodology. This is not media studies; more an allegory of all reality as (tele)visual recorded history, excavating the strata of haunted technology from which the fragile band of code comprising our sense of time is briefly emitted.
Drawing connections between incidents of ancient and popular culture, from Mark E. Smith's lyric- "They say damp records the past"-to Rising Damp's (meta)physical structure of decay, the book finds damp's temporal power manifest in everything from alchemy, mysticism, and parish folklore to pulp, Time Team, darts, the local newspaper and, of course, the sitcom.
Merging the vast with the parochial, the occult with the comedic, Code: Damp tunes into the weird demands of damp as a time-traveling material at the intersections of comedy, myth and technology, taking all three as serious resources to better (dis)orient the ground we stand on.
Code: Damp is a sometimes-comedic field report that charts an esoteric code hidden within the twin poles of 1970s sitcoms Rising Damp and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Outlining how past cultural patterns condensate and repeat through technology, time is shown to be a damp condensation seeping through the centuries and out onto the telly.
Interspersed with the author's own photographs, prints, Holsten Pils cans, local newspaper entries and carrier bags, as well as a whole host of other characters, the work seems an antiquarian's conceit that takes time travel as a metaphoric methodology. This is not media studies; more an allegory of all reality as (tele)visual recorded history, excavating the strata of haunted technology from which the fragile band of code comprising our sense of time is briefly emitted.
Drawing connections between incidents of ancient and popular culture, from Mark E. Smith's lyric- "They say damp records the past"-to Rising Damp's (meta)physical structure of decay, the book finds damp's temporal power manifest in everything from alchemy, mysticism, and parish folklore to pulp, Time Team, darts, the local newspaper and, of course, the sitcom.
Merging the vast with the parochial, the occult with the comedic, Code: Damp tunes into the weird demands of damp as a time-traveling material at the intersections of comedy, myth and technology, taking all three as serious resources to better (dis)orient the ground we stand on.
Sophie Sleigh-Johnson, born 1988, is a Southend-on-Sea based writer. She holds a PhD from Goldsmiths College, London, where she now teaches as an Associate Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies. Her performance work, comprising sound collage and spoken word with printmaking props, occasions numerous performances both nationally and internationally. She writes for publications including The Darkside, The Leigh Times, and The London Drinker. https://www.sophiesleigh-johnson.co.uk
