Archive for the ‘fascism’ Category
By
Simon Sellars •
Mar 11th, 2008 •
Category:
Australia, Ballardosphere, architecture, celebrity culture, fascism, media landscape, micronations, psychology, sport, television, urban revolt
MelbPsy gets all Atrocity Exhibition on the House that Sam Newman built, the ‘tabloid architecture’ sheathing yet another backyard Aussie micronation.
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.
By
Dan Lockton •
Jan 3rd, 2008 •
Category:
Lead Story, architecture, censorship, dystopia, fascism, features, psychology, speed & violence
According to Dan Lockton, one of the many ‘obsessions’ running through Ballard’s work is the effect of architecture on the individual. More than playful psychogeography, Ballard dissects architectural influence on his characters with technical precision.
By
Simon Sellars •
Oct 19th, 2007 •
Category:
Australia, Ballardosphere, Jean Baudrillard, YouTube, celebrity culture, consumerism, crime, death of affect, dystopia, fascism, features, film, media landscape, politics, speed & violence, sport, suburbia, urban revolt
A Melbourne rugby reporter, Ben Davis, is bashed on live TV while giving a report. Unsurprisingly, his attackers are caught, given the attack was broadcast to the entire nation. Ballardian? Absolutely. Let’s count the ways…
By
Rick McGrath •
Jul 25th, 2007 •
Category:
advertising, consumerism, fascism, reviews, suburbia, urban revolt
Former ad man Rick McGrath takes another look at Kingdom Come from ‘the perspective of marketing, advertising and psychopathology’. He also looks at the Metro-Centre website, used to promote the book, and asks, ‘The abattoir? Not too gloomy?’
By
Mike Holliday •
Jul 17th, 2007 •
Category:
Shepperton, fascism, features, flying
Cover detail: The Unlimited Dream Company (Cape 1979; artwork by Bill Botten).
Mike Holliday explains how to read J.G. Ballard’s 1979 novel The Unlimited Dream Company as a fascistic work.
Ambiguity is one of the defining features of J.G. Ballard’s fiction. Consider, for example:
+ Empire of the Sun and The Kindness of Women – to what extent […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Jun 27th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, advertising, consumerism, fascism, visual art
© Metro-Centre, 2007.
Something is stirring over at our favourite shopping mall. After lying fallow for almost two months, the official blog of the Metro-Centre shopping centre in Brooklands stirs to life with a rather ominous poster campaign starring the failed talk-show host, David Cruise.
First, we were promised that ‘the wait is almost over’. And now, […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Jun 13th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, Salvador Dali, fascism, film, surrealism, visual art
You can’t help but notice a backlash towards Ballard these days. Here are two of the more aggressive memes.
BACKLASH #1: Ballard vs The Blogosphere
Ballard was recently interviewed by the Guardian in a series on writers’ rooms. In this feature he said, ‘The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand and then […]
By
Simon Sellars •
May 27th, 2007 •
Category:
Australia, Ballardosphere, Salvador Dali, academia, architecture, enviro-disaster, fascism, film, surrealism, visual art
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 […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Mar 27th, 2007 •
Category:
Australia, Jean Baudrillard, boredom, dystopia, fascism, features, speed & violence, suburbia, urban revolt
by Simon Sellars
Suburban Badlands: the Mill Park aftermath. Photo: Angela Wylie (from the Age newspaper).
The system is self-regulating. It relies on our sense of civic responsibility. Without that, society would collapse. In fact, the collapse may even have begun.”
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J.G. Ballard. Millennium People (2003; p. 104).
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On the morning of 2 January 2007, Melbourne woke to disturbing […]
By
Simon Sellars •
Mar 6th, 2007 •
Category:
Ballardosphere, architecture, consumerism, fascism, urban revolt
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 […]