Ballardian

Finally: the long-delayed conclusion to my photo essay, ‘”Paradigm of nowhere”: Shepperton, a photo essay’, in which I aim for the traversal of a distinct psychic terrain: the blanket overlay of Shepperton with a mental template gleaned from so many Ballard novels and short stories.

Press release with fuller information and accompanying images for JG Ballard, Autopsy of the New Millennium, opening today at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB).

Iain Sinclair and Will Self together on stage talking about Ballard, Orson Welles and CCTV. Garden gnomes, Simon Reynolds and John Lydon get roped into the ring, also.

More Bluewater, less Ballard according to Michael Collins.

Out in the suburbs, the Birmingham-based Ballard exhibition Zodiac 3000 draws first blood…

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”.

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.

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.

Here are the entries in the 1st Ballardian Festival of Home Movies. Congratulations to the winner, Ben Slater.

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.

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 the [...]

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?’

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 dissects [...]

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 [...]

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.

“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 [...]