Ballardian

Photo by Dr Champagne.

Work has started on a Black Plaque for Robert Vaughan, anti-hero of JG Ballard’s Crash. When English Heretic started one of its intentions was to commemorate psychopaths. Of course, the aim was never so obvious as to glorify serial killers in the tired tradition of industrial culture, but to draw attention to the archetype of the psychopath, the immutable weird of the nightmare. There is no better example in modern fiction than Ballard’s hoodlum scientist, fallen TV angel of the M4 corridor.

As part of the project a sister blog has been set up: The Hoodlum Scientist’s Fieldbook.

Though the idea of a Black Plaque for Vaughan was seeded at the beginning of English Heretic, much of the recent impetus and structure for the research has been inspired by the wonderful Ballard related blogs and articles constructed by Simon Sellars at Ballardian, Nina at Infinite Thought, and Owen at Sit Down Man, you’re a bloody tragedy.

The first location research centres around Northolt in Middlesex, which Ballard’s genius somehow manages to transform into the erotic suburb of a Paul Delvaux painting. The following entry is a personal rendering of Northolt through English Heretic’s Ubu absurd lens…the usual obsessions: toponymic conspiracy; Osirian descent, urban Fulcanellian hermeticism…

In carrying out these researches I would love to hear and have join in, collaborators who share an interest and passion for Ballard. The project is a conscious homage to the great man himself.

English Heretic celebrates the self-saucing psychopath, the Hoodlum Scientist, Dr Robert Vaughan, voyaging to the dark heart of Crash, the M4 corridor, in ‘Final Churches of the Northolt Apocalypse’, this oversaturated photo essay, stalking the alien underbelly of tombstone streets and derelict petrol pumps…

I am terribly flattered to be linked to this crew. Both Nina and Owen are writers that make me feel like I’m forever catching up, such is their skill, while English Heretic is one of the more compelling blogs I’ve run across of late.

This photo essay from the good doctor is suitably lurid and pulpy, like the acid scene in Crash. Like Chris Foss’s cover for Crash. A strange and obsessive incantation… and something is stirring beneath the tarmac.

Photo by Dr Champagne.

The cars in the afternoon light look that school of dead dolphins duped into Falmouth bay by Naval sonar or so the conspiracy went.

More at English Heretic…