Ballardian

A Donna Dennis ‘tourist cabin’, Park Avenue, New York. Photo: Peter Mauss/Esto. ‘Interstitial architecture’ has always held my attention and Ballard’s world is riddled with it, like the short story ‘Billennium’, with its discovery of the walled-away living room that represents ‘absolute spatial freedom’, a sign of hope in an overcrowded world where public and [...]

Image by Pedro Armestre and Mario Gómez. The influence of BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh is spreading far and wide, so much so he is now featuring in a personality profile (disguised as a walking tour) in the Los Angeles Times in which the colour of his hair is discussed! Luckily, the writer, architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, [...]

John informs me of this slideshow over at the Guardian, to promote Simon Henley’s new book, The Architecture of Parking (Thames & Hudson, £24.95). According to the Guardian, the book ‘casts an objective eye over car parks, one of the most important but most neglected building types of the modern era, and finds a strange [...]

J.G. Ballard has a new piece in the Guardian on the Bilbao Guggenheim — ‘the larval stage of a new kind of architecture’. ‘This is Disneyland for the media studies PhD,’ Ballard writes, in observation of the Frank Gehry-designed building. ‘Cascades of golden light overpower the sun, rising from a jumble of massive titanium forms [...]

Over at Fact magazine, k-punk has written a great re-appraisal of John Foxx’s Metamatic album from 1980. Metamatic still sounds as remarkable as it must have done to unschooled ears back then, completely wrenched from time and space and forged with laser hammers, ion-driven lathes and neon tongs. K-punk’s article is dense and packed with [...]

Initially, this story reminded me just a little of Ballard’s ‘Billennium’, set in a severely overcrowded future in which a group of friends find uninhabited space sealed off from the oppressive density outside… Eight artists snuck into the depths of Providence Place mall and built a secret studio apartment in which they stayed, on and [...]

Traven stumbled into a set of tracks left years earlier by a large caterpillar vehicle. The heat released by the weapons tests had fused the sand, and the double line of fossil imprints, uncovered by the evening air, wound its serpentine way among the hollows like the footfalls of an ancient saurian. … One question [...]

In my interview with BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh, I mentioned that I’d love to see Ballard taught in architectural schools. Geoff enthusiastically replied, ‘I would love to do this — it’s actually a conscious fantasy of mine, so who knows … I would jump at the chance to lead a class like that!’ Now, all our [...]

Annoyingly, I missed the doco Radiant City, with its Corbusier title and Ballardian aesthetic, when it played at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. I’d actually bought a ticket but double-booked myself like a simple-minded fool. I just knew it would be right up my alley, based on this synopsis: Sprawl is eating the planet. [...]

Technovelgy is an intriguing site that explores the inventions of science fiction writers. And while we don’t often think of J.G. Ballard as a writer of predictive, ‘hard’ science fiction (ie, he’s never been bothered with imagining the shape of far-future technology, Asimov style, being far more interested in mapping out the psychological effects of [...]

Please forward to anyone that may be interested … TRIP: Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives Manchester, 19-22 June 2008. Call for Papers and Projects * * Psychogeography * * * Neogeography * * * Deep topography * * * Urban interventions * * * Locative media * * * Collaborative Mapping * * * Between June [...]

ABOVE: Crash! on YouTube by Simon Sellars CRASH! (1971) Director: Harley Cokliss Writer: J.G. Ballard Starring: J.G. Ballard & Gabrielle Drake I wasn’t satisfied by just writing SF stories, you see. My imagination was eager to expand in all directions.” J.G. Ballard. ‘From Shanghai to Shepperton’, 1982. Leached away by the camera lens, the dimension [...]

ABOVE: Cokliss/Ballard on YouTube CRASH! Director: Harley Cokliss Writer: J.G. Ballard Starring: J.G. Ballard & Gabrielle Drake This a transcript of the meta-narration and voiceover from the film CRASH!. See here for ‘Crash! Full-Tilt Autogeddon’, an appraisal of the film. NARRATOR: In slow motion, the test cars moved towards each other on collision courses, unwinding [...]

The Abbey in the Oakwood, 1809-10, and Cloister Cemetery in the Snow, 1817-19, by Caspar David Friedrich. I’m a bit late with this; I meant to link to it last week… The always-amazing BLDGBLOG has this interview with writer Patrick McGrath: BLDGBLOG: That raises the question of what sorts of architecture pop up most frequently [...]

City of the Immortals, by Michelle Lord (2007). Besides Future Ruins, Michelle Lord is holding a second exhibition as part of the UK’s national Architecture Week. Titled The City of the Immortals, it’s based “upon the Jorges Luis Borges short story ‘The Immortal’. In a narrative series of photographic images, the fictional city Borges describes [...]

Future Ruins: Michelle Lord © 2007. Michelle Lord has emailed me with some more information and stills from her show ‘Future Ruins’, now exhibiting at The Birmingham and Midland Institute, Margaret St., Birmingham B3 3BS UK. It’s on from June 15-23 and is part of Architecture Week 2007; see www.architectureweek.org.uk for further details. I’m fascinated [...]

In news just to hand (with hopefully more info to come): —————————————————————————————————— + FUTURE RUINS EXHIBITION June 15-23 Press release: Inspired by author JG Ballard’s mid-period novels, Michelle Lord’s ‘Future Ruins’ connects the remaining architectural examples of Birmingham’s concrete past with Ballard’s vision of the contemporary landscape, his prophetic views on Brutalist architecture and the [...]

+ IDEAL, RADIANT In his excellent paper, ‘Ballard’s Banlieue Radieuse’, delivered at the Ballard conference, Owen Hatherley locates JGB’s Vermilion Sands stories as a vision at right angles to the dystopian tradition in which Ballard is normally housed — the Vermilion collection posits, Hatherley writes, ‘an actual, liveable future utopia that is eminently possible’. And [...]

Here I present the latest wrapup, not as extensive as I would like as I’m currently in Dubai trying to locate my missing passport, while entertaining the thought of spending a few days, maybe a week in the non-space of the Dubai International Airport until it turns up (hopefully a week; I’m trying to embrace [...]

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 [...]

The UEA Studio: Conference Headquarters (photo: Simon Sellars). I attended From Shanghai to Shepperton: An International Conference on J.G. Ballard at the University of East Anglia on the weekend, and I’m suffering a bit of a comedown. I always get a bit melancholy when these temporary autonomous zones collapse and everyone returns to virtual communication. [...]

+ CATALOGUE OF CONTEMPORARY ATROCITIES Jeannette Baxter, organiser of this weekend’s J.G. Ballard Conference at the University of East Anglia, delivers a challenging examination of Surrealist influences in Ballard’s Running Wild for Issue 5 of the online journal, Papers of Surrealism. ‘The Surrealist Fait-Divers: Uncovering Violent Histories in J. G. Ballard’s Running Wild’: Abstract In [...]

Egyptian Ballard World: dead monorails hanging against the sky like guillotines (photo by Dubai Dave). Dickens World is set to open next week, according to this report. It’s a recreation of ‘a dark, dirty and dank London…populated by thieves, murderers and ghosts…[with an] air of authenticity as it was built in consultation with experts from [...]

+ KILLING CARS Rich, car-crashing idiot No. 2: Stefan Eriksson. Over at The Wrong Advices, Dan writes, ‘After watching Eddie Griffin destroy a Ferrari Enzo I was reminded of some of the other times rich idiots have killed beautiful and expensive cars. I’ve put together a list of some of the more memorable crashes.’ My [...]

David Smith is a blogger who came to Ballard “very late”. Having just finished Super-Cannes, however, he has posted a collection of links, reviews and musings relating to that book. It’s a useful primer for anyone wanting to excavate more about one of Ballard’s darkest visions. Dig deep. Re-acquainting myself with these quotes, it’s interesting [...]

Nice article by Jonathan Jones tracing the influence of Surrealism, including in the works of Ballard. It’s as neat a summation as you’d want of one of JGB’s major inspirations: When we speak of something being surreal, we mean something between funny peculiar and funny ha-ha. It is undoubtedly this comic dimension that made surrealism [...]

The infamous Texas Book Depository window, and the fatal frame from the Zapruder JFK assassination film. Abraham Zapruder was a tourist in Dealey Plaza whose amateur cine-film captured the President’s tragic death. The Warren Commission concluded that frame 210 recorded the first rifle shot, which wounded Kennedy in the neck, and that frame 313 recorded [...]

by Simon Sellars Photo by Emiliano Granado. Used with permission. Geoff Manaugh is a writer and essayist whose work has appeared in Contemporary, Space & Culture, Blend, Lumpen, Inhabitat, WorldChanging, the Oyster Boy Review, the Urban Design Review, Subtopia, Vector, things magazine, and The Allen Ginsberg Audio Collection (a short essay in the CD liner [...]

OPENING LINE: “Soon after three o’clock on the afternoon of April 22nd 1973, a 35-year-old architect named Robert Maitland was driving down the high-speed exit lane of the Westway interchange in central London”. This short novel represents the second installment in JGB’s ‘urban disaster’ trilogy (Crash was the first; High-Rise was to follow). Architect Robert [...]

OPENING LINE: “Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” From the opening scene of Laing tucking into his canine dinner — the spoils of urban warfare — to the final [...]

Over at BLDG BLOG, we’ve been invited to set up shop in a container city. A wonderful proposition, given that BLDG BLOG consistently honours Ballard’s urban disaster trilogy with the real-world architectural applications it so artfully maps out. From a recent BLDG BLOG post: I can’t end … without quoting J.G. Ballard; it’s like a [...]

OPENING LINE: “In his prime the Hollywood screenwriter was one of the tragic figures of our age, evoking the special anguish that arises from feeling sorry for oneself while making large amounts of money”. (from ‘The Sweet Smell of Excess’). From the 1996 Harper Collins edition: The first-ever collection of J.G. Ballard’s articles and reviews, [...]

OPENING LINE: “The first person I met at Eden-Olympia was a psychiatrist, and in many ways it seems only too apt that my guide to this ‘intelligent’ city in the hills above Cannes should have been a specialist in mental disorders.” From the 2002 Picador edition: “Eden-Olympia is more than just a multinational business park, [...]

OPENING LINE: “I first met Jane Ciracylides during the Recess, that world slump of boredom, lethargy and high summer which carried us all so blissfully through ten unforgettable years, and I suppose that may have had a lot to do with what went on between us.” (from ‘Prima Belladonna’). From the 2001 Flamingo edition (originally [...]

Interview by Tim Chapman Iain Sinclair at the Barbican. Photo: Tim Chapman, © 2006. Iain Sinclair has been acclaimed as one of Britain’s most visionary writers and as an incomparable prose stylist. His early writing, notably Lud Heat (1975) and White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings (1987), was rooted in his adopted home of East London. It [...]

by Simon Sellars an image from John Foxx’s Cathedral Oceans project John Foxx, the former lead singer of Ultravox, is an undisputed electronic music pioneer. Before Midge Ure came along, the band’s three Foxx-driven albums, Ultravox! (1977), Ha! Ha! Ha! (1978) and Systems of Romance (1978), fused near-future melancholy with icy man-machine interfaces and the [...]

According to the BBC, a group of boffins are using a new techno toy to determine “how dubious a development project will be”, using Cannes as a model. However, instead of looking at the effects of pollution and the play of light, it seems to me they could have saved a lot of money and [...]

One of the sources for the death of affect is the distancing from community and a sense of shared existence brought about by the technological management of reality. There is a central paradox here: while the technical construction of collective time (through the engineered events in the media) tends to produce an instant ‘real-time’ that [...]

by Simon Sellars I think I’m the only person I know who doesn’t own a record player or a single record. I’ve never understood why, because my maternal grandparents were lifelong teachers of music, and my father as a choirboy once sang solo in Manchester Cathedral. But that gene seems to have skipped me.” —————————————————– [...]

Matt over at Mountain 7 has posted an interesting account of Whiteley Village in England, with accompanying photos, that will be immediately familiar to lovers of Ballardian landscapes: “Wikiedia: ‘Whiteley is a new town in the county of Hampshire, England, near Fareham. The town straddles two council districts: the borough of Fareham to the south [...]

Geoff has posted Part 2 of his Mike Davis interview over at BLDGBLOG, with suitably Ballardian and peripheral topics: “In this instalment, Davis discusses the rise of Pentecostalism in global mega-slums; the threat of avian flu; the disease vectors of urban poverty; criminal and terrorist mini-states; the future of sovereignty; environmental footprints; William Gibson; the [...]

Since posting about Ballard World, it would appear things are moving quicker than we imagined. According to this newspaper article, “A sex theme park designed to enhance its visitors’ lovemaking skills will open in the heart of London within months, the academy’s director announced on Wednesday. Amora — The Academy of Sex and Relationships is [...]

Over at BLDGBLOG, Geoff Manaugh has posted a terrific interview with Mike Davis, the man JGB dubbed “the prose laureate of America’s decline”. From BLDGBLOG: ‘I first discovered Mike Davis’s work about a decade ago, through his book City of Quartz, a detailed and poetic look at the social geography of Los Angeles. Perhaps most [...]

Following on from Ballardian’s breaking coverage of plans to open a string of Ballard Worlds (amusement parks themed after JG Ballard’s work) in Britain, we thought it was high time we paid massive respect to the original Ballard World — in Alexandria, Egypt. The original and the best — the one that started it all. [...]

Mr Rent-A-Quote is at it again. “I prefer car washes and chinese takeaways” — another classic soundbite. From The Telegraph, 14/5/06. “Next month at Tate Britain, John Constable’s magnificent canvases of the English countryside will be shown together for the first time. J.G. Ballard, Jon Snow, Sir John Mortimer and others describe what his paintings [...]

Suburbia finally reaches China…

Here’s a query I’m posting on behalf of Paul Williams over at the JGB Yahoo list. Can anyone help? Paul writes: “Here’s something I’m working on. It has a distinct whiff of Ballard in the collision of science and society… Dubai is generating substantial income from property based on the occupation of its coastline. Dubai’s [...]

Using JGB’s Concrete Island and the Venice Architecture Biennale as a launching pad, BLDG BLOG has a nice post that says this: “I suppose it’s not even outside the realm of possibility to imagine, several hundred years from now, after nearly everyone’s died of bird flu, AIDS, or open civil warfare, that freeways – those [...]

Here at Ballardian we’re going to be doing an interview soon with Geoff Manaugh from BLDG BLOG about the influence of Ballardian ideas in the architectural realm, but in the meantime whet your appetite with this latest piece from JGB in the Guardian, about the modernists and the ‘architecture of death’. A handful of dust [...]

Photography by Michael Wolf.