The Kink in the Arc is a collective, dream novel edited by Paul Becker. Contributors stage a description of an artwork which are then ‘sited’ within the context of the novel: an overheard conversation between two residents in a ‘sanatorium for the weary of image’. This mise en abyme or ‘Russian doll’ effect is repeated in the resident’s conversations, which often contain stories within stories, descriptions within descriptions, works within works; mirroring the structure of the novel itself. This is also a formal device used as a way of untethering the reader from narrative, disconnecting, distancing and allowing her to experience the artworks in a state of not knowing: an attempt to break the circuit of reading, the narrative arc we know (and love) but which also needs to be distressed, reassessed: kinked.

The Kink in the Arc is fundamentally concerned with a version of Ekphrasis: descriptions of artworks contained within artworks. My contribution alludes to Stendhal Syndrome, image overload, overstimulation and respite through art. It refers obliquely to Norman church architecture and early Renaissance fresco painting.

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