Ballardian: the World of J.G. Ballard

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 final version of Thomas Cazals’ tribute, ‘J.G. Ballard: The Oracle of Shepperton’, has been released. It’s one of the stranger JGB ‘adaptations’ around, and is told with considerable flair and skill.

A review of two academic articles written by Ben Noys on Ballard’s work, both analysing Ballard’s place in contemporary cultural production. This review also considers Mark Fisher’s recent Lacanian analysis of Basic Instinct 2, in an edition of Film-Philosophy edited by Noys, with its unearthing of intriguing Ballardian parallels.

A review of Demanding the Impossible, the Third Australian Conference on Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction, held at Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 5-7.

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.

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?’

The UEA Studio: Conference Headquarters (photo: Simon Sellars).
I attended From Shanghai to Shepperton: An International Conference on J.G. Ballard at the University of East Anglia on the weekend, and I’m suffering a bit of a comedown. I always get a bit melancholy when these temporary autonomous zones collapse and everyone returns to virtual communication. Especially […]

J.G. BALLARD by Andrzej Gasiorek
(Manchester University Press, 2005, pp. 228).
review by Umberto Rossi
This serious, well-documented academic book-length essay on James Graham Ballard and his oeuvre is nearly exhaustive, given that Gasiorek hasn’t paid sufficient attention to Ballard’s short stories (even though the Man is — more than anything else — a master of the short […]

When film adaptations of J.G. Ballard’s work are discussed, Crash and Empire of the Sun are always mentioned but never Jonathan Weiss’s Atrocity Exhibition. Now, thanks to the Dutch film company Reel 23, we can see what Weiss was up to — they’ve recently released this buried work on DVD (and it’s a beautiful piece […]

Reviewed by Andrea Simonis
Review of JG Ballard: Conversations (ed. V Vale, 2005) and JG Ballard: Quotes (selected and edited by V Vale & Mike Ryan, 2004).
Published by RE/Search Publications
V Vale has been an underground publishing icon in San Francisco for quite some time, kicking off with late-70s ‘punk tabloid’ Search and Destroy (America’s equivalent […]

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 […]

Review by Andrés Vaccari

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM AMPLIFICATION.
Amplification
A book of photographs by Jeff Busby.
3 Deep Publishing
ISBN 0-9580508-2-1
Review by Andrés Vaccari
This handsome and hyper-glossy coffee table book concerns the unpleasant subject of automobile accidents. It’s impossible, of course, to put out a book of photographs of wrecked cars without thinking of JG Ballard; in […]