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Archive for the ‘entropy’ Category

Munich Round-Up: Interview with J.G. Ballard

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.



Ballardian Home Movies: The Final Cut

By Simon Sellars • Mar 2nd, 2008 •

Category: YouTube, dystopia, entropy, features, film, gated communities, humour, psychopathology, speed & violence, suburbia, suicide, surveillance, technology, television, urban decay

Here are the entries in the 1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies. Congratulations to the winner, Ben Slater.



‘You are Hochhaus!’: Ballard in Berlin

By Dan O'Hara • Jan 9th, 2008 •

Category: David Cronenberg, Steven Spielberg, WWII, architecture, audio, dystopia, entropy, fascism, film, gated communities, interviews, urban decay, urban revolt, urban ruins, utopia

Dan O’Hara interviews the creators of Hochhaus, a German mixed-media radio play based on High-Rise. Transposing the novel to Berlin in 2013, it references Nazism, notably Speer’s social engineering through architecture, on its way to exploring Ballard’s relevance to speculative models of German life.



J.G Ballard: The Visual Tribute, Part 2

By Simon Sellars • Dec 30th, 2007 •

Category: entropy, enviro-disaster, short stories, visual art

Here’s a selection of visual art that we’ve previously featured on this site, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work. See Part 1 for more recent discoveries.

Image from ‘Future Ruins’
by Michelle Lord

Inspired by author J.G. Ballard’s literary visions of modernist architectural design and his prophetic views on the technological demise of the […]



J.G. Ballard: The Visual Tribute

By Simon Sellars • Dec 28th, 2007 •

Category: Australia, David Cronenberg, Lead Story, entropy, enviro-disaster, features, short stories, visual art

Here’s a selection of visual art I’ve recently come across, all directly inspired by or referencing themes in Ballard’s work.



“A fierce and wayward beauty”: Waste in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard, Part III

By William Viney • Dec 18th, 2007 •

Category: Jean Baudrillard, Lead Story, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, entropy, enviro-disaster, speed & violence, urban decay

According to William Viney, Crash presents a barrage of images that expresses collapse, dereliction, and waste; a seemingly endless carnival of sex and destruction; intoxicating, perverting, and desensitizing the reader, while Empire of the Sun can be seen as the terminus of Ballard’s treatment of waste, the epitome of all that has gone before. Although Ballard’s other works deal with the subject of death and the disposal of corpses, Empire of the Sun attempts to cope with this disposal on a mass-scale, or rather, during both war and peace, it explores the complex transition between the valued human being and lifeless, disposable cadaver.



“A fierce and wayward beauty”: Waste in the Fiction of J.G. Ballard, Parts I & II

By William Viney • Dec 11th, 2007 •

Category: Lead Story, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, entropy, enviro-disaster, features, speed & violence, urban decay

William Viney explores how High-Rise, Concrete Island, and “The Ultimate City” contain familiar visual landscapes. However, each of these recognisable aspects of urban experience is rendered unfamiliar through the pervasive renegotiation of waste categories.



Cousin Silas: Another Flask of Ballard

By Simon Sellars • Oct 3rd, 2007 •

Category: Brian Eno, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, William Burroughs, entropy, interviews, music, paranormal, urban ruins

Cousin Silas has created two albums inspired by the works of J.G. Ballard. Simon Sellars spoke to Silas about Ballard, Lovecraft, Forteana, Moorcock, Eno, Tarkovsky — all the essentials.



Review: Grave New World

By Rick McGrath • Aug 20th, 2007 •

Category: Jean Baudrillard, academia, death of affect, dystopia, entropy, reviews, urban decay

The basic tenet in Dominika Oramus’ new book on Ballard is that since the end of World War II western civilization has been merrily racing down the Highway to Hell in a white Pontiac; and all the evidence you need is in the fiction of J.G. Ballard.



Territories Reimagined

By Ballardian • Aug 18th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, architecture, consumerism, dystopia, entropy, psychogeography, urban decay, urban revolt, urban ruins, utopia

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 *
* * […]



‘Magisterial, Precise, Unsettling’: Simon Reynolds on the Ballard Connection

By Simon Sellars • Jun 2nd, 2007 •

Category: Brian Eno, New Worlds, Philip K. Dick, Salvador Dali, William Burroughs, audio, entropy, interviews, science fiction, short stories

Interview by Simon Sellars.
Simon Reynolds is one of the most recognisable music critics around — or at least his style is, not least for its willingness to tackle pop music as an art form worthy of sustained intellectual discourse rather than as a fleeting moment of adolescent flash. Reynolds breaks new ground, melding unbridled […]



Ballard World Set for 2008 Opening

By Simon Sellars • Apr 13th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, architecture, consumerism, entropy, theme parks

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 the […]



Can We Ever Escape This Death Drive?

By Andrés Vaccari • Jun 28th, 2006 •

Category: architecture, death of affect, entropy, features, media landscape, politics, terrorism

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 […]