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Archive for the ‘urban ruins’ Category

Flooded London

By Simon Sellars • Jun 29th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, architecture, deep time, enviro-disaster, urban decay, urban ruins, visual art

Film and media studio floods London 82 years hence, evokes Ballard.



Contemporary Critical Perspectives: J.G. Ballard

By Simon Sellars • Jun 7th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, academia, consumerism, politics, sexual politics, speed & violence, terrorism, urban ruins

Info on a new volume of Ballard criticism, edited by Jeannette Baxter.



The Light-Painter of Mojave D: An Interview with Troy Paiva

By Simon Sellars • Jun 6th, 2008 •

Category: America, Lead Story, Philip K. Dick, alternate worlds, architecture, deep time, entropy, enviro-disaster, flying, interviews, photography, science fiction, speed & violence, surrealism, urban decay, urban ruins, visual art

Troy Paiva’s desert photography evokes the crumbling, decadent resorts and enervated cityscapes of Ballard’s Vermilion Sands and Hello America stories. Enjoy this interview with Troy, the Light-Painter of Mojave D.



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…



Relocating Absence exhibition

By Simon Sellars • Apr 21st, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, deep time, inner space, urban ruins, visual art

Details of a new exhibition in London that “often plays with the constants of space and time”. It includes the work of Michelle Lord, whose “Future Ruins” series previously featured on Ballardian.



Porcine Psychopathology

By Simon Sellars • Feb 12th, 2008 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Chris Marker, Iain Sinclair, architecture, consumerism, photography, urban ruins

infinite thØught takes a Ballard-inspired tour of Bluewater, one of the inspirations for JGB’s Kingdom Come.



Hello America, goodbye Liberty

By Simon Sellars • Jan 22nd, 2008 •

Category: America, Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, urban ruins

Gerry Canavan collects images of a ruined Statue of Liberty. Ballard is partial to the meme, too…



‘You are Hochhaus!’: Ballard in Berlin

By Dan O'Hara • Jan 9th, 2008 •

Category: Chris Marker, David Cronenberg, Germany, Steven Spielberg, WWII, architecture, audio, dystopia, entropy, fascism, film, gated communities, interviews, urban decay, urban revolt, urban ruins, utopia

Dan O’Hara interviews the creators of Hochhaus, a German mixed-media radio play based on High-Rise. Transposing the novel to Berlin in 2013, it references Nazism, notably Speer’s social engineering through architecture, on its way to exploring Ballard’s relevance to speculative models of German life.



Miraculous Foreplay

By Simon Sellars • Dec 10th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Lead Story, WWII, advertising, autobiography, surrealism, urban ruins

The publicity machine is warming up for Ballard’s forthcoming autobiography, Miracles of Life, due for publication February 2008.



Grave New World: Introduction, Part 1

By Dominika Oramus • Nov 5th, 2007 •

Category: David Cronenberg, Iain Sinclair, Jean Baudrillard, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, Salvador Dali, WWII, William Burroughs, academia, death of affect, dystopia, features, psychiatry, science fiction, surrealism, technology, urban ruins

Dominika Oramus reads Ballard’s work as a record of the gradual internal degeneration of Western civilization: though we are not literally living amidst the ruins, the golden age is far behind us and we are witnessing the twilight of the West.



Cousin Silas: Another Flask of Ballard

By Simon Sellars • Oct 3rd, 2007 •

Category: Brian Eno, Michael Moorcock, New Worlds, William Burroughs, entropy, interviews, music, paranormal, urban ruins

Cousin Silas has created two albums inspired by the works of J.G. Ballard. Simon Sellars spoke to Silas about Ballard, Lovecraft, Forteana, Moorcock, Eno, Tarkovsky — all the essentials.



Territories Reimagined

By Ballardian • Aug 18th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, alternate worlds, architecture, consumerism, dystopia, entropy, psychogeography, urban decay, urban revolt, urban ruins, utopia

Please forward to anyone that may be interested …
TRIP: Territories Reimagined: International Perspectives
Manchester, 19-22 June 2008.
Call for Papers and Projects
* * Psychogeography *
* * Neogeography *
* * Deep topography *
* * Urban interventions *
* * [...]



Archaeological Finds

By Simon Sellars • May 22nd, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, Shepperton, alternate worlds, architecture, dystopia, enviro-disaster, inner space, urban decay, urban ruins

Self-portrait: next to the M3 in Shepperton (photo: Simon Sellars).
Apologies for the down time this site has experienced since the Ballard conference. I’m still in England where I’ve experienced many Ballardian and sub-Ballardian moments (and even some non-Ballardian moments, would you Adam and Eve it?) including exchanging views on ‘torture porn’ with Rick Poynor against [...]



Disaster Prone

By Simon Sellars • Apr 26th, 2007 •

Category: Ballardosphere, enviro-disaster, television, urban ruins

Here’s an excerpt from the BBC documentary, The Martians and Us, focusing on J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World. It features Ballard cheer from Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, Will Self, Roger Luckhurst, Brian Stableford and John Sutherland.
[ thanks, Pedro ]