Ballardian

Being as I’m based in Australia, I obviously can’t make it to London yesterday (your time) and tomorrow (yours, mine, our time) to attend Cultural Fictions II, sponsored by the AHRC and the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, June 15th & 16th (found via k-punk).

Some lovely London-based reader could, though, and perhaps summarise Steve ‘kode 9‘ Goodman’s ‘Urban Delay: the Sonic Fiction of J.G. Ballard’ paper for this site. It’s free, apparently. Go on — I’ll be your best mate.

Here’s the line up:

All sessions held in the Small Hall (Cinema), Richard Hoggart Building (Main Building), Goldsmiths

Thursday 15th June

9:00 – 9:30
Registration

9:45 – 11:00
Greg Tate, ‘Closer to the Edit: Race Paper Scissors Islam Science Fiction’

11:15 –12:45
Panel #1: Potentialities

Owen Hatherley, ‘Art is a Branch of Mathematics’: Zamyatin’s Socio-Fantasy’
Wissam Mansour, ‘The End of Science Fiction With a Twist of Fiction’
Dene October, ‘The (Becoming wo)Man Who Fell to Earth’

12:45 – 1:45
Lunch

1:45 – 2:45
Anthony Joseph, ‘“Using the Future to Reconcile the Wrongs of the Past”: Building the African Origins of UFOs’

3:00 – 4:45
Panel #2: Sonic Science Fictions

Mark k-punk, ‘Consensual Hallucinations’
Susan Schuppli, ‘From Here to Eternity’
Mark Broughton, ‘Dyschronia in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape’
Steve Goodman, ‘Urban Delay: the Sonic Fiction of J.G. Ballard’

Friday 16th June

10:00 – 11:00
Roger Luckhurst, ‘Science Fiction: From Subculture to Network Portal’

11:15 – 12:45
Panel #3: Sci-phi

Nina Power, ‘Science Fiction and Philosophy in Kant, Sartre and Philip K. Dick: What Does the Extra-terrestrial Think We Are?’
James Burton, ‘Fabulation and Messianic Time: a Science Fictional Logic of Salvation’
Maeve Pearson, ‘Progeny: The Political Uses and Abuses of Childhood in Some Stories by Ursula Le Guin and Phillip K. Dick’

12:45 – 2:00
Lunch

2:00 – 3:00
Luciana Parisi, ‘Affective Sensorium’

3:15 – 4:50
Panel #4: Onto-mutations

Jessica Edwards, ‘“Running Out of Her Skin”: The Fold of Deep Time in the Black Female Body’
Oliver Belas, ‘“Transhumanism” and Metonymy in Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis’
Michael Metthey , ‘Nanotechnologies’
James Trafford, ‘Nanotechnics and SF Capital’

5.00 – 5:40
Final Panel: keynote speakers in discussion
Chair: Kodwo Eshun

5:50 – 6:30
Performance by Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band