Archive for the ‘micronations’ Category
By
Simon Sellars •
Dec 28th, 2012 •
Category:
academia, airports, alternate worlds, CCTV, consumerism, death of affect, features, gated communities, Lead Story, Marc Auge, micronations, Shanghai, suburbia, surveillance, the middle classes, urban revolt
Simon Sellars re-reads Ballardian space in light of the idiosyncratic, real-world phenomenon of micronations, tracing parallels between Ballard’s physical and psychological spaces and Marc Augé’s idea of ‘non-place’.
By
Simon Sellars •
Aug 23rd, 2009 •
Category:
academia, alternate worlds, features, inner space, Japan, Lead Story, memory, micronations, nuclear war, Pacific, Shanghai, war, WWII
What’s the connection between J.G. Ballard, Hakim Bey and Fredric Jameson? Tracking Ballard’s surreal visions of nuclear conflict to Ground Zero in the Pacific, the paper maps his peculiar, irradiated sense of “affirmative dystopias”, a template for his more enduring urban works (famously, Crash) that, finally, intersects in striking ways with the writings of Bey and Jameson.
By
Simon Sellars Melb Psy •
May 27th, 2009 •
Category:
advertising, alternate worlds, architecture, audio, Australia, boredom, CCTV, consumerism, death of affect, deep time, fascism, features, hyperreality, Lead Story, leisure, micronations, occult, perception, photography, psychogeography, schizophrenia, surveillance, temporality, time travel, utopia
Simon Sellars, Mel Chilianis and Melb Psy take an audiovisual tour of Melbourne’s Crown Casino, seeking to map the coordinates of this micronational zone — consumer-driven control space with a raging need.
By
Simon Sellars •
Aug 5th, 2008 •
Category:
alternate worlds, America, Ballardosphere, body horror, consumerism, death of affect, film, gated communities, horror, humour, micronations, urban revolt
Parallels between Ballard’s Kingdom Come and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
By
Simon Sellars •
Jun 16th, 2008 •
Category:
alternate worlds, architecture, Australia, Ballardosphere, CCTV, gated communities, micronations, paranormal
Where can one find the world’s strangest housing communities? Here is a handy list.
By
Simon Sellars •
Mar 11th, 2008 •
Category:
architecture, Australia, Ballardosphere, 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
Simon Sellars •
Dec 3rd, 2007 •
Category:
academia, alternate worlds, Australia, Ballardosphere, dystopia, Fredric Jameson, micronations, Pacific, utopia
All Melbourne crew are welcome to come and heckle me this Wednesday (Dec 5, 1pm) at Monash University.
By
Simon Sellars •
Sep 30th, 2007 •
Category:
alternate worlds, architecture, Ballardosphere, Borges, gated communities, micronations, WWII
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 [...]
