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Kosmopolis 08
Author: Simon Sellars • Oct 19th, 2008 •Category: Ballardosphere, Barcelona, Salvador Dali
What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.
Salvador Dali.
Tomorrow I’m flying to Barcelona as a guest of the Kosmopolis literary festival. On the 25th, I’m honoured to be appearing on a panel with V. Vale (RE/Search publications) and Bruce Sterling, discussing Ballard and the Ballardosphere. This is kind of unreal to me. The panel will be moderated by Jordi Costa, curator of the Ballard exhibition at the CCCB. I intend to post daily reports from the festival, and if any reader of this site is in town, let’s meet.
After, I’ve got a few days to spare and I hope to be able to make it to Figueras, Dali’s hood. This is on Ballard’s recommendation (see below). A photo essay will doubtless result, adding to my ongoing series of travel reports using Ballard as a neural guidebook. Previous installments: the North Pacific and Shepperton.
Barcelona’s a wonderful place. It’s worth going to see the big church, the Sagrada Familia. You should go to the Park Guell, which Gaudi designed. And you can walk around the center of Barcelona and see these apartment houses which he also designed, with their decorated railings. The Catalans have always had their own culture — it’d one of the oldest languages in Europe. Both Dali and Picasso came from Catalonia. It’s a very lively place — Barcelona’s a great city. If you’ve got a reasonable amount of money, the hotel to stay in is called the Colon, opposite the gothic cathedral (not the Sagrada Familia) there.
If you can afford to rent a car, you can go to Figueras, which is not that far — about 100 miles. It’s Dali’s home town, with a Dali museum. If you go about 10 miles further you can go to Cadaques, where Dali lives, which is worth visiting for its own sake. All the landscapes resemble the giant, lizard-like forms that you get in Dali’s paintings — you actually see them: ‘My God, he just sat on his porch and just painted those ancient rocks!’
I’ve been there many times. My girlfriend and I used to take our kids on holiday every summer (not always together). Spain is the place to take a vacation ’cause it’s near (Greece is a bit of an effort — it’s a long way to drive). Also, I enjoy driving across France. We’d go to a place called Roscas, near Cadaques, which Dali has used in several of his paintings. It’s very near Barcelona. Get a good
guidebook before you set out…J.G. Ballard, interviewed by V. Vale and Andrea Juno, RE/Search #8/9: J.G. Ballard, 1984.
But the only guidebook I will really need is this.
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Simon Sellars
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Figueres (I believe this is the correct spelling, rather than Figueras) is well worth a visit for the Dali museum. I know that Ballard always travels by car when possible, but there is also a train from Barcelona which should be pretty cheap.
Sounds wonderful! Will there be a video/podcast?
Looking forward to meeting you Simon. I am flying to Barcelona with a friend Thursday morning – we are leaving very early in Monday 27. I think we’ll have to visit the exhibition twice but I really don’t know how the Kosmopolis thing is organised. Do we have to buy tickets in advance or rexerve seats? If you have some time, drop me a line – all the best!
Please greet Bruce Sterling at Kosmopolis for me (my real name is Steve R.) – we were in the same sci-fi club at the Univ. of Texas in 1975, and I have also co-spoken with him at his “hacker-crackdown” conferences” in the 90’s… he’s a longtime personal friend since we were both 18 yrs. old. And yes, all THREE of us are 1-degree-of-separation apart! Through JGB and this, your Ballardian site, of course…
Simon — lucky man… I’d love to join you and Jordi for a beer and a few slices of Iberian ham (try some before you go), but it appears my fate is to have been there for the opening, but not the closing, of the JGB exhibition. Plus I’d love to meet Vale & Sterling and share a laugh about Shepperton with Toby Litt! Oh well… Have fun, be great, and amuse us with some on-the-ground reports!
i wish i could be there. i look forward to your interview with vale. i’ll bet you two will really hit it off.