The Car that Ate Bournville
By Simon Sellars • Apr 30th, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, David Cronenberg, suburbia, urban revolt, urban ruins, visual art
Out in the suburbs, the Birmingham-based Ballard exhibition Zodiac 3000 draws first blood…
Archive for the ‘suburbia’ Category
“Paradigm of nowhere”: Shepperton, a photo essay (part 1)
By Simon Sellars • Apr 26th, 2008 •
Category: Australia, Lead Story, Shepperton, alternate worlds, dystopia, features, flying, sexual politics, suburbia, surrealism, utopia
In 2007 I toured Shepperton using Ballard’s Unlimited Dream Company as my guidebook. Here are the results of that neurological survey, born from the torsion of “every cell in my body waiting at the end of a miniature runway”.
The Ballardian Primer: Surveillance Cameras
By Simon Sellars • Mar 14th, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, CCTV, alternate worlds, crime, death of affect, gated communities, suburbia, surveillance, technology
To celebrate the new version of the wonderful SurveillanceSaver software, here is The Ballardian Primer to Surveillance Cameras, with all quotes taken from Ballard and all images lifted from the Axis CCTV network.
Car Parks: The Ballardian Primer
By Simon Sellars • Mar 6th, 2008 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Iain Sinclair, Shepperton, alternate worlds, architecture, consumerism, psychogeography, suburbia
I’ve been asked to contribute to a documentary on car parks. Here then, as preparation, is my Ballardian Primer to Car Parks, with quotes from Ballard’s novels.
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.
J.G. Ballard: The Oracle of Shepperton
By Simon Sellars • Feb 26th, 2008 •
Category: Shepperton, alternate worlds, autobiography, dystopia, film, inner space, reviews, science fiction, suburbia
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.
Melborea Moronica: New ‘Depraved Species of Electric Flora’ Found Growing in Melbourne, Australia
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…
Radiant City
By Simon Sellars • Sep 22nd, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, architecture, suburbia
Annoyingly, I missed the doco Radiant City, with its Corbusier title and Ballardian aesthetic, when it played at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival. I’d actually bought a ticket but double-booked myself like a simple-minded fool.
I just knew it would be right up my alley, based on this synopsis:
Sprawl is eating the planet. Across […]
It’s An Ad, Ad, Ad World
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?’
‘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 Rats that Ate Mill Park
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 […]
Drowned Shepperton
By Simon Sellars • Feb 19th, 2007 •
Category: Ballardosphere, Shepperton, enviro-disaster, suburbia, urban decay
Check out these flood maps — dynamic maps predicting sea-level rise around the globe (found via Dissensus).
First, adjust the rising sea level to +14m.
Then focus on London.
Now zoom into Shepperton.
Result: a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Shepperton-based author of The Drowned World.
Ballardian World News: The Parking Revolution
By Simon Sellars • Feb 14th, 2007 •
Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, speed & violence, suburbia, urban revolt
“Believe me, the next revolution is going to be about parking.” (J.G. Ballard. Millennium People.)
It’s becoming harder to keep up with the swelling tsunami of Ballardian world events. First we had to come to terms with the hidden meaning behind the Lisa Nowak story and Australia’s recent flag-waving menace. Then we had to wait for […]
