The idea of ‘cultural space’ – and who has access to it – has long been a preoccupation of Scott King. One of his woodcut prints, ‘Become Successful… Accumulate Space’, was based on a ‘truism’ of his own, for example, while his 2021 publication, The Debrist Manifesto, ended with a question regarding the same subject. 

In that text, the protagonist concludes that ‘Debrism’ – what King terms “the endless pursuit of a thought/idea that never becomes ‘concrete’ [or] gets made” – was perhaps an end in itself. 

“If the ‘culture worker’ ceased to seek out Their Approval,” King says, “or gave up on the idea of ‘satisfaction through completion’, then there really was no need for Their Space ie the ‘cultural space’ of the museum or the ‘broadcast space’ of having your work featured in one of their magazines, winning one of their awards, etc.”

The New Space takes this scenario as its starting point – “the culture worker’s largely unquestioned desire to accumulate Their Space,” as he puts it. This time, however, King has written a novel (a fable of sorts) instead of a manifesto, which is very nearly how the second book originally turned out. 

“I tried for months, maybe even a year, to get past chapter one – which is a manifesto, of sorts – but I couldn’t do it,” he says. “I was very happy with the first chapter and eventually thought I might just give up and publish it as it was, or maybe make it into a voiceover for a short film or something. 

“All the time I was doing this, I knew that what I really wanted to do was use this first chapter as a ‘springboard’ to write fiction and eventually, after dozens of failed attempts to make chapter two manifesto-like; I gave in, and threw myself in.”

The book, which is both funny and relatable, took two years to put together and involved King reducing a much longer draft down to a relatively pithy 12,000 words.

As with The Debrist Manifesto (which King designed with Richard Massey), King makes interesting use of type choices in The New Space. Chapter one of the novel is set in “Futura Bold Condensed combined with Futura Bold”, while chapter two is set in VAG, which signals the beginning of the fiction itself.

“Chapter three is [in] Courier New,” says King, “which we used to reflect what we called ‘His Writing’ – the writing by the character in the book, who is me, but in a world of ‘half-fiction’.” King worked on the design of the book with Francisca Monteiro, who, he says, “made the whole thing look convincing as three different design styles in one book”.

“I spent so long doing it – and did it so intensely – that it became a kind of ‘alternative universe’, a New Space in itself,” King says. “On the bright side, I think I have enough material left over for another book … or ten.”

The New Space is available now from Service Industries; serviceindustries.co.uk; scottking.co.uk