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Archive for the ‘medical procedure’ Category

Simon Brook’s Minus One

By Simon Sellars • Mar 8th, 2008 •

Category: David Cronenberg, Steven Spielberg, alternate worlds, film, humour, medical procedure, psychiatry, reviews, short stories, the middle classes

In 1991 Simon Brook made a short film from J.G. Ballard’s obscure 1963 short story, ‘Minus One’. Enjoy this super-rare screening of Simon’s film.



‘The Stuff of Now’: Toby Litt on J.G. Ballard

By Gwyn Richards & Simon Sellars • May 2nd, 2007 •

Category: Australia, Toby Litt, consumerism, interviews, invisible literature, literature, medical procedure, suburbia

Interview by Gwyn Richards & Simon Sellars

Toby Litt is an English novelist who published his first book, Adventures in Capitalism (a volume of short stories), in 1996, when he was 28. He’s since won praise for the dark inventiveness of his writing, a combination of cinematic prose, apocalyptic imagery and sharp wit that freely […]



The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

By Simon Sellars • Oct 8th, 2006 •

Category: William Burroughs, bibliography, inner space, media landscape, medical procedure, sexual politics, short stories, speed & violence

OPENING LINE:
“Apocalypse. A disquieting feature of this annual exhibition — to which the patients themselves were not invited — was the marked preoccupation of the paintings with the theme of world cataclysm, as if these long-incarcerated patients had sensed some seismic upheaval within the minds of their doctors and nurses.”
For many, The Atrocity Exhibition is […]



A User’s Guide to the Millennium (1996)

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 […]



J.G. Ballard: The Complete Short Stories, vols 1 & 2 (2006)

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; […]



Atrocity Exhibition/Throat Sprockets

By Simon Sellars • Jul 20th, 2006 •

Category: Ballardosphere, David Cronenberg, film, medical procedure

Thanks to TimC for pointing me towards this very positive review of Weiss’s Atrocity Exhibition film, published in Sight & Sound. Interestingly, the fellow who wrote that review, Tim Lucas, also wrote a novel called Throat Sprockets (1994), which was described thusly:
“The focused description of scenes, of the medical exactness of throat architecture recalls nothing […]



Another Atrocity: A ‘New’ Work by J.G. Ballard

By Mike B • Feb 17th, 2006 •

Category: medical procedure, pastiche

The Atrocity Exhibition is a collection of J.G. Ballard’s most extraordinary short stories. Written in the few years following the tragic death of his wife, they are his most difficult work, representing the extremes of anguish, desire, alienation and horror. Compact and repetitive, they pick over the same questions of psychopathology, sexuality and death in […]



J.G. Ballard’s Medical Fetish

By Simon Sellars • Feb 8th, 2006 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Bruce Sterling, David Cronenberg, medical procedure, sexual politics

What we’ve hinted at on Ballardian (ie JG Ballard’s Enlargement Phalloplasty; Why I Want to fuck John Howard), some people have ‘examined’ (ooh, err…nurse!) in a…ahem….’full frontal’ (ooh, vicar!) no-holds barred fashion. I picked up from our stats that a site called Fetish Fish has linked to our Bruce Sterling/JG Ballard interview in a piece […]



Ballardian re-enactments

By timc • Dec 15th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, medical procedure, urban decay

An excerpt from Peter Carty’s Ballard-referencing review of an interesting-sounding novel…
“An Everyman’s life history doomed to repeat itself as farce”
Remainder, By Tom McCarthy
Published: 12 December 2005
“Re-enactment has been a feature in recent art, most famously in Jeremy Deller’s reprise of the Orgreave battle between striking miners and police. It is a art practice that readily […]



Urban Post-Mortems

By Johnny • Dec 11th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, medical procedure

http://www.darkpassage.com/gate.htm



Jimmy Ballard’s Hospital Review

By Johnny • Oct 7th, 2005 •

Category: Salvador Dali, alternate worlds, medical procedure, pastiche

What might have happened if J.G. Ballard had used his medical training to its fullest potential and become a doctor rather than a writer? Well, there would be no pen name for a start; ‘Jimmy Ballard’ would be a different man indeed, as Johnny Strike discovers. In this fascinating snapshot into an alternate Ballardian universe, […]



The Director of the Medical Illustration Department

By Johnny • Oct 7th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, medical procedure

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/brad/medill/pernkopf.html
The History of Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen
by David J. Williams
“Frequently misunderstood because of the history of the time in which it was produced, Eduard Pernkopf’s Topographische Anatomie des Menschen nevertheless represents the pinnacle of color anatomic illustration. The more than 800 magnificent watercolor paintings of human anatomy found in Pernkopf’s atlas occupied a […]



‘Child of the Diaspora’: Sterling on Ballard

By Chris • Oct 7th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Bruce Sterling, Shepperton, William Burroughs, cyberpunk, enviro-disaster, flying, interviews, invisible literature, medical procedure, science fiction, sexual politics, urban decay

Bruce Sterling is a prolific science-fiction writer, futurist, social critic and design professor, best known for his bestselling novels and seminal short fiction, and as the editor of the Mirrorshades anthology that defined the ‘cyberpunk’ subgenre. His nonfiction includes works of futurism such as Tomorrow Now; a regular column and blog for Wired; and his […]



J.G. Ballard’s Enlargement Phalloplasty

By Kristoph • Oct 7th, 2005 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Steven Spielberg, medical procedure, pastiche

by Kristoph Eggleston

J.G. Ballard photo courtesy of Steve Double
This is a work of fiction concerning one of the 20th-century’s more controversial writers, J.G. Ballard. It utilises the method Ballard himself employed as part of a short piece in the RE/Search reprint of his Atrocity Exhibition collection. In that piece, “May West’s Reduction Mammoplasty”, Ballard recontextualised […]