Ballardian

Self-portrait: next to the M3 in Shepperton (photo: Simon Sellars).

Apologies for the down time this site has experienced since the Ballard conference. I’m still in England where I’ve experienced many Ballardian and sub-Ballardian moments (and even some non-Ballardian moments, would you Adam and Eve it?) including exchanging views on ‘torture porn’ with Rick Poynor against the eminently bombable backdrop of the Tate Modern; excavating the strata of the late 20th century with Jo Murray amid the lush, green undergrowth that lines the scabby underbelly of the M3 motorway; wandering the terminal sands that sheath the haunted and forgotten seaside zone of Grays Beach; getting lost in the forest and coastal paths of the Isle of Wight with my two brothers, as we searched high and low in the pitch black for the dinghy we had beached that would take us back to the safety of our boat. We stumbled upon a hidden community of nocturnal fisherfolk replete with high-powered torches for eyes and a string of gadgets blinking in the dark from the tips of their enormous rods like cosmic antennae…

But I’ve been too pushed for time to write it all up, as I’ve had some pressing family matters to engage with — the English portion of the Sellars clan is not one I get to interact with much, so I’m making the most of it. I used to have no trouble writing travel blogs on the go, but this time round it seems to have eluded me. Even writing this short entry is highly pressurised, as I must awake in 5 hours 3 hours at the crack of dawn to catch a fishing boat to Sealand, where I’ll be spending a day and a night in a considerable state of isolation. On my return it’s London for a couple of days, probably visiting old Brixtonian haunts, before hopefully visiting the sound mirrors in Kent. The following weekend I’m in Dubai and then I’m pootling off home to Melbourne, where I’ll be writing this trip up in all its glory.

I’ve let intuition guide me when taking photos and have been flabbergasted to discover that there are very few shots of people. Instead, industrial wrecks and new, machine-tooled monuments have dominated, like the old, semi-submerged pier in Brighton, the M3 in Shepperton, and the new lock in Cardiff, with its markings resolving themselves in op-art style allusions.

I know what’s happening, here. I watched Children of Men for the first time on the plane over from Melbourne and was deeply shocked and disturbed by its bleak view of a sparsely populated, near-future, anarchic Britain. That unnerving film has filtered my vision steel-grey every time I’ve looked through my camera lens: I’m finding resonance everywhere I move.

(I also hope to see 28 Weeks Later before I leave — God only knows what *that* will do to me.)

But all that’s to be expanded upon in future posts. I hope you’ll stay tuned for another week or so while I gather my senses and marshall my thoughts and attempt to make sense of this journey into inner space.

Until then, ‘Chant chant love war fear hate… Out of control - mob running wild / All you ever get is all you steal / Side of London that the tourists never see / Angle ambience’ (PiL, ‘Chant’, 1979).