Archive for the ‘deep time’ Category
By
Simon Sellars •
Apr 22nd, 2008 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Salvador Dali, architecture, celebrity culture, consumerism, deep time, photography, psychology, sexual politics, speed & violence, surrealism, visual art
For this upcoming exhibition, the International Project Space in Birmingham will be transformed into the J.G. Ballard Centre for Psychopathological Research, “an institute built to interrogate the New Psychology explored in Ballard’s fiction.”
By
Simon Sellars •
Apr 21st, 2008 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, deep time, inner space, urban ruins, visual art
Details of a new exhibition in London that “often plays with the constants of space and time”. It includes the work of Michelle Lord, whose “Future Ruins” series previously featured on Ballardian.
By
Dan O'Hara •
Mar 15th, 2008 •
Category:
Germany, WWII, archival, biology, deep time, entropy, enviro-disaster, inner space, science fiction, surrealism
Dan O’Hara has re-translated three interviews with JGB, originally published in German in the 60s, in which Ballard provides absorbing insight into his enviro-disaster trilogy: The Drowned World, The Drought and The Crystal World.
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 2nd, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Shanghai, Shepperton, deep time, travel
Above: the Ballard family’s former house, now lit up in the colours of capitalism. Photo: Rick McGrath.
“Do you believe in synchronicity?” Andy asked. “That’s the 10 o’clock signal for today’s national anniversary. Sirens are blowing all over the country right now.” He leaned in, conspiratorially. “It was precisely 70 years ago today the Japanese attacked […]
By
Pippa Tandy •
Aug 27th, 2007 •
Category:
Shanghai, Steven Spielberg, WWII, deep time, features, film, filmography
ABOVE: Youtube uplink for Shanghai Jim (BBC Bookmark, 1991; produced by James Runcie).
by Pippa Tandy
SHANGHAI JIM (1991)
Director/Producer: James Runcie
Executive Producer: Nigel Williams
Starring: J.G. Ballard, Michael Troughton, Hans Gebruers
See here for a transcript of J.G. Ballard’s commentary from the film.
DOCUMENTARY FILMS about the lives and works of artists have many different functions. They may describe their […]
By
Ballardian •
Aug 27th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Shepperton, WWII, archival, deep time, film, filmography, flying
ABOVE: Youtube uplink for Shanghai Jim (BBC Bookmark, 1991; produced by James Runcie).
NOTE: The following is a transcription taken from J.G. Ballard’s commentary for the documentary Shanghai Jim. It also transcribes the film’s brief interviews with his daughters, Fay and Bea, and the film’s direct quotes from Ballard’s work.
See here for Pippa Tandy’s appraisal […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Mar 6th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, architecture, deep time, surrealism, visual art
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 so […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Feb 26th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Jean Baudrillard, celebrity culture, cyberpunk, deep time, photography, space relics, speed & violence
Photo: Stephen Hughes.
Read recently…
+ Via Fanny Magnate, David Chandler’s essay on the work of photographer Stephen Hughes:
Over the last five years Hughes has worked all over Europe, developing an interest in what might be called ‘peripheral places’, sometimes places literally on the edge — of cities perhaps, or by the sea — but also pockets […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 10th, 2006 •
Category:
bibliography, deep time, enviro-disaster, inner space, urban decay
OPENING LINE:
“Soon it would be too hot.”
From Amazon UK:
In the 21st century, fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the ice-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 8th, 2006 •
Category:
bibliography, deep time, enviro-disaster, urban decay
OPENING LINE:
“At noon, when Dr Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 8th, 2006 •
Category:
bibliography, deep time, inner space
OPENING LINE:
“Above all, the darkness of the river was what impressed Dr. Sanders as he looked out for the first time across the open mouth of the Matarre estuary.”
Ballard’s fourth novel. My 1993 Flamingo version has quotes on the back:
Through a ‘leaking’ of time and a supersaturation of matter, a forest area in West […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Sep 16th, 2006 •
Category:
William Burroughs, bibliography, celebrity culture, deep time, media landscape
OPENING LINE:
‘There’s gold, Wayne, gold dust everywhere! Wake up! The streets of America are paved with gold!’.
From the Carroll & Grad 1981 edition:
A century after America’s financial collapse and the climactic upheavals of the 1990s, Wayne stows away on SS Apollo, bound for the New World on a voyage of rediscovery. He and the crew […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Sep 5th, 2006 •
Category:
Salvador Dali, WWII, William Burroughs, advertising, architecture, bibliography, boredom, celebrity culture, consumerism, death of affect, deep time, dystopia, enviro-disaster, fashion, film, flying, humour, invisible literature, media landscape, medical procedure, non-fiction, photography, politics, psychogeography, psychology, science fiction, sexual politics, space relics, speed & violence, surrealism, television, urban decay, visual art
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, published over the […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Sep 1st, 2006 •
Category:
New Worlds, Shepperton, WWII, advertising, architecture, bibliography, boredom, celebrity culture, consumerism, death of affect, deep time, dystopia, enviro-disaster, flying, humour, invisible literature, media landscape, medical procedure, photography, politics, psychogeography, psychology, science fiction, sexual politics, short stories, space relics, speed & violence, suicide, surrealism, television, terrorism, urban decay, urban revolt, visual art
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 one volume; […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Sep 1st, 2006 •
Category:
advertising, bibliography, consumerism, deep time, dystopia, sport, terrorism, urban revolt
OPENING LINE:
“The suburbs dream of violence.”
From the 2006 Fourth Estate edition:
Richard Pearson, unemployed advertising executive and life-long rebel, is driving out to Brooklands, a motorway town on the A25. A few weeks earlier his father was fatally wounded at the Metro-Centre, a vast shopping mall in the middle of this apparently peaceful town, when a […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 7th, 2005 •
Category:
New Worlds, Philip K. Dick, deep time, film, photography, reviews, science fiction, suicide
Nothing sorts memories from ordinary moments. They claim remembrance when they show their scars.
Chris Marker. La Jetée.
review by Simon Sellars
The films of Chris Marker are often termed ‘essayist’, participating in a phenomenological play with deep roots in French intellectualism. Working within documentary and pseudo-documentary modes, they mimic the manner in which memory and desire […]