lost in here forever

i had the most ballardian experience on a lay-over in hong kong: trapped in a shopping mall!

i was excited to be back in hong kong after 18 years. we hopped on the airport-express which took us to kowloon in 15 minutes. i had planned to walk around the area, go to the star-ferry and transfer to hong kong island. after exiting at kowloon station at 8am we found ourselves in the middle of the still closed “elements shopping mall” (which, according to wikipedia, caters to the upper middle class). finding any exit from this huge, multilevelled labyrinth of closed gucci-stores became a real nightmare experience, soundtracked by an endless stream of x-mas-muzak.


After 20 minutes we arrived at the main entrance, but were told by a guardian that we could not use this exit as the place was still closed. we had to go back to find another way. finally emerging to the earth surface we found ourselves inside immaculate gardens, surrounded by massive residential high-rise blocks that formed a circle around us. all attempts to pass these buildings towards the waterfront were blocked by fences or guards.

i knew where i wanted to go but it was impossible to reach. combine this with jet-lag after an 11 hour flight and the strange memory of a place that has changed tremendously during the past 2 decades and you feel like walking through an unpleasant dream.

We finally decided to find the train-station again and went straight to the island to get our dose of hong kong insanity.

"When Brad and I Take Road-Trips..."

This is the ultimate star-portrait!
"When Brad and I take a road-trip we love a Taco Bell and a roadside motel."

Sure, that´s why Mrs. Jolie is pictured flying around in a private plane with her skirt up to her thighs.

This photo and the caption are the ultimate ballardian statement: sex, technology and bizarre fame meet 300 meters over the desert ground.

I guess this was shot by Annie Leibovitz and appeared in Vogue.

Project Level-D

I think I have read most of the JG Ballard obituaries, tributes, essays and reviews since yesterday. Thanks to Simon Sellars´ brilliant Ballardian-Twitter service and the Guardian collection, it was easy to almost overdose on the theme. Reading all this made me hyper-aware of the ballardian reality that surrounds us and the following is as ballardian as it gets.


For some time I am intrigued by the dubious, ever increasing interest in female dolls and figurines that cater to grown-up, mostly Japanese men. But the new, ultra-realistic silicon sex dolls that enjoy growing popularity are beyond creepy.


Generations away from your typical, cheap, blow-up-doll from yesterday, the creations from the Superior Structure Artistic Silicon Doll Team, or shorter: Project Level-D are looking amazingly real. Horribly real.

Look at the facial expressions and the suggestive, pseudo innocent poses in which the various models are presented. They either appear sad, melancholic or as if they just died, still inviting you to do whatever you like to their multi-joined latex bodies.


Meet the proud owner of a harem of Level-D models. This young man, who decided that he just could not get along with real women, paid ca. $6.000,- for every one of his "girls".

Will it be long before the next generation of "animated" models will invade the living- and bedrooms of these men?

Commercial and Nasty

"Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time."
Quote by JG Ballard

"What I Believe" by James Graham Ballard

"I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

I believe in the forgotten runways of Wake Island, pointing towards the Pacifics of our imaginations.

I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel; in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.

I believe in the beauty of all women, in the treachery of their imaginations, so close to my heart; in the junction of their disenchanted bodies with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters; in their warm tolerance of my perversions.

I believe in the death of tomorrow, in the exhaustion of time, in our search for a new time within the smiles of auto-route waitresses and the tired eyes of air-traffic controllers at out-of-season airports.

I believe in the genital organs of great men and women, in the body postures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di, in the sweet odors emanating from their lips as they regard the cameras of the entire world.

I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers, in the disease stored up for the human race by the Apollo astronauts.

I believe in nothing.




I believe in Max Ernst, Delvaux, Dali, Titian, Goya, Leonardo, Vermeer, Chirico, Magritte, Redon, Duerer, Tanguy, the Facteur Cheval, the Watts Towers, Boecklin, Francis Bacon, and all the invisible artists within the psychiatric institutions of the planet.

I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humour of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic.

I believe in adolescent women, in their corruption by their own leg stances, in the purity of their disheveled bodies, in the traces of their pudenda left in the bathrooms of shabby motels.

I believe in flight, in the beauty of the wing, and in the beauty of everything that has ever flown, in the stone thrown by a small child that carries with it the wisdom of statesmen and midwives.

I believe in the gentleness of the surgeon’s knife, in the limitless geometry of the cinema screen, in the hidden universe within supermarkets, in the loneliness of the sun, in the garrulousness of planets, in the repetitiveness or ourselves, in the inexistence of the universe and the boredom of the atom.

I believe in the light cast by video-recorders in department store windows, in the messianic insights of the radiator grilles of showroom automobiles, in the elegance of the oil stains on the engine nacelles of 747s parked on airport tarmacs.

I believe in the non-existence of the past, in the death of the future, and the infinite possibilities of the present.

I believe in the derangement of the senses: in Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Huysmans, Genet, Celine, Swift, Defoe, Carroll, Coleridge, Kafka.

I believe in the designers of the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Berlin Fuehrerbunker, the Wake Island runways.

I believe in the body odors of Princess Di.

I believe in the next five minutes.

I believe in the history of my feet.

I believe in migraines, the boredom of afternoons, the fear of calendars, the treachery of clocks.

I believe in anxiety, psychosis and despair.

I believe in the perversions, in the infatuations with trees, princesses, prime ministers, derelict filling stations (more beautiful than the Taj Mahal), clouds and birds.

I believe in the death of the emotions and the triumph of the imagination.

I believe in Tokyo, Benidorm, La Grande Motte, Wake Island, Eniwetok, Dealey Plaza.

I believe in alcoholism, venereal disease, fever and exhaustion.

I believe in pain.

I believe in despair.

I believe in all children.

I believe in maps, diagrams, codes, chess-games, puzzles, airline timetables, airport indicator signs.

I believe all excuses.

I believe all reasons.

I believe all hallucinations.

I believe all anger.

I believe all mythologies, memories, lies, fantasies, evasions.

I believe in the mystery and melancholy of a hand, in the kindness of trees, in the wisdom of light."

J.G. Ballard, 1984

Now: Zero! James Graham Ballard, 1930 - 2009

When I found out this morning that James Graham Ballard had died yesterday I was shocked and deeply sad. It almost felt like a distant, but beloved family member was dead. A strange reaction towards the passing of a person I have never met in my life. On the other hand: JG Ballard´s writing and his thoughts have accompanied my life and shaped my world view for the last 25 years.

I constantly re-visit his amazing short-stories, one of which gave the name to this blog. His novels pushed open windows in my mind that would never close again. His interviews provided a constant stream of brilliant insights into the mind of a person who had the ability to see right through the veneer of the human condition. As an admirer of surrealism and pop-art, he was one of the first to understand, decipher and describe the psychological effects the all surrounding media-landscape, technology and architecture are having on our "inner space".

In "The Intensive Care Unit", written in the late 60s or early 70s, he describes the first family meeting of people who live in a future society where physical contact has grown out of fashion. Communication and intimacy is only possible via a closed circuit TV-screen.
What sounds like a drab premise for a thinly disguised parable turns into a gripping story thanks to Ballard´s fantastic imagination. The way he describes the couple´s intimate moments as a series of expertly montaged close-ups of their bodies (private parts are blurred with filters), their honeymoon being spent by watching the same documentaries of some foreign holiday-resort, is written so well that one almost anticipates this hilarious dystopia.

Another brilliant short story from "Myths of the near future" is the wonderfully titled "Motel Architecture". Here we meet a "film critic" who has retreated to live in a self-contained "solarium", where he has devoted himself to analyse the famous "shower scene" from "Psycho" over and over again.
Sitting in a glorified wheelchair, he re-plays the sequence on multiple screens, hoping to finally reveal the hidden geometry that the scene supposedly contains. Only looked after by a cleaning woman, he is totally secluded from any outside reality. Soon he believes that a strange intruder is hiding inside his solarium. He can hear him breath and he catches glimpses of the stranger on surveillance videos.

The conclusion to the story doesn´t come as a big surprise, but Ballard follows the nightmare logic of his visions to the inevitable end. Written in 1978, years before the home-video revolution was sweeping the western world, he painted a bleak but perversely attractive picture of a society that could hardly wait to retreat into their homes and heads, eagerly devoting themselves to their private obsessions.


That was one of Ballard´s remarkable aspects: He never came across as a finger pointing, grumpy man who intended to change our silly ways. Like his protagonists, he embraced the present and the future, knowing that the age of reason had already come to an end.

10 Years ago I moved temporarily into a house that was designed by Le Corbusier. It was like living inside JGB´s "High Rise". Although the sporadic acts of violence never seemed to occur, I was aware of Ballard 24/7. I was prepared to climb to the top!



Here is a couple of obituaries, essays and clippings I gathered today:
The Guardian´s obituary by David Pringle.

The most dedicated and sophisticated Ballardian has an obituary by site owner Simon Sellars.

Re/Search publisher Vale notes his first thought upon hearing of Ballard´s death: “There’s no thinker left alive that I can totally trust. They’re all dead.”

"Cult" is certainly a questionable attribute. BBC NEWS: Cult Author JG Ballard dies at 78

A good article from Filmmaker Magazine.

This is what IFC had to say.

Another obituary from The Telegraph

A very touching collection of readers comments from BBC News: Have your say. Your memories of JG Ballard

Megablog Boing Boing is also deeply influenced by JGB.

Here is a Canadian info/fan site dedicated to the man himself: JG Ballard.

More Thoughts on the death of JG Ballard by Robin Brown

A Personal Obituary by Vicky Lamburn

How the pitiful NME sees it. (They are, of course, forgetting to name "Warm Leatherette" and "The Comsat Angels")

Last but not least, on the lighter side of things: Total Film dreams up pitches for 9 Ballard Stories That Must Be Filmed



"Enslavement designed as mass entertainment."

Dark Park

My hero Troy Paiva is still out every full moon to catch his vision of Lost America. Between releasing two books ("Lost America" and "Night Visions") he is kind enough to share his amazing work on his Flickr-site.




His nocturnal journeys have recently led him to one of my favourite subjects: An abandoned amusement park! I posted a selection of a similar project by another photographer recently, but when Mr. Paiva clicks his way through a lost and dark fun-park, it is sure to be something special.



I would love to invite Troy Paiva to come to Berlin to pay a full-moon visit to the spectacularly creepy "Spree Park", the former East-German amusement park which is left to rot since 2001!


Click pics to enlarge!

Terminus

"Perhaps the ending state of the human race will resemble a well-run airport where no planes ever take off!"







(click pic: make big)

Quote: J.G. Ballard in conversation, 2003
Amazing night photography of abandoned terminal at San Francisco International Airport by 4Pizon.

Don´t Look At The Camera!

For quite some time I had the creeping fear that "Brave New World", "1984" and their celluloid remixes "THX 1138" and "Brazil" were not only painting a bleak and sarcastic dystopia, but that they actually were self fulfilling prophecies and a how-to-manual for governments to implement the "benevolent dictatorship" that is being created around us.

Boing Boing reported about the latest, incredibly creepy public awareness posters, which are currently popping up in London (see above). This craziness is paid for by the taxpayers who are in retrospect treated like complete idiots by the people who are behind this paranoid and pathetic attempts at mass-hypnosis. You could almost mistake if for satire.

Not only do these messages tell you that it is o.k. to sniff through other people´s trash and report them if you find anything that is beyond your way of understanding, they also expect you to unsee the millions of CCTV cameras that are suspecting you to be a potential criminal. Observing the observers is suspicious! Don´t notice the man behind the curtain!



This really screams for a "Improv Everywhere"-stunt! Thousands of identically dressed people with hats and sun-glasses need to show up in front of every open CCTV camera and stare at it for a few minutes.


The other, much easier reaction already happened in the comments section of the thread: People created instant piss-takes of the posters! I guess this shows how deeply unsettling these posters really are.

Fear makes advertisers happy!


While I was typing up this post, a follow-up article appeared on Boing Boing that reported the remixing of the posters. The comments are full of great, sarcastic takes on the governMENTAL idiocy.

Ooze Out and Away

Read two interviews, one with J.G. Ballard, one with David Cronenberg!

Both men were interviewed by Mark Dery for Rage Magazine in 1997 around the time Cronenberg´s vision of "Crash" hit the screens.


via boingboing

Bunker Beauties

Philosopher, media theorist and art critic Paul Virilio started taking photos of "The Atlantic Wall", the bunker defense system along the French coast in 1958. Over many years he returned to the abandoned concrete giants that had been built during WW2. In the 1970s he collected the photos with his essays in his book "Bunker Archeology"








(click for bigger bunkers)

Boom!

I was finally able to watch "Boom!", one of the most notorious, critically and financially failed flops in celluloid history.


Like similar car-crash films such as "Showgirls" it is actually not a bad movie. It just totally mis-judged and missed its potential audience (by miles!).

Thanks to John Waters´ frantic eulogies "Boom!" has become a classic of "failed art" and is treasured by lovers of "bad" cinema. Much has been written about its camp value which it delivers in spades!


The opening sequence sets the tone: Liz writhes in pain during a massage. She throws glasses back at her slave-like servants (yes, one is a midget) while pressing her swollen, diamond-clad fingers onto several intercom devices.
"Pain! Injection!!" are her first words and we know we are in for a wild ride after the camera zooms in on one of her famous Krupps-diamond.
Jennifer Saunders must have seen this over and over to model the character of Edina Monsoon from "Absolutely Fabulous" after Liz´s über-bitch performance.


I really didn´t know what to expect of "Boom!" and so I was totally surprised to see a film that looks like it came straight out of J.G. Ballard´s "The Thousand Dreams of Stella Vista" short-story anthology.

All the characters and images that live in Ballard´s imaginary "Vermillion Sands" desert-resort become flesh in "Boom!": The mysterious, tragic woman who wears the most bizarre outfits, who is permanently surrounded by ticking telex-machines and who relies on a system of "elaborate" intercom devices to communicate with her small world of dependent servants.

The drifting man who follows his obsessions, who becomes a part of this secluded world only to play his role in a play that unfolds with nightmare-logic consequence.


All of this takes place in a setting that is one of the most beautifully shot film-sets ever. The house, that combines the best (or worst) of Dali, Pierre Cardin and the Flitstones, is perched on-top of a rugged cliff in Sicily is the true star of the film.
The angles and rooms serve as a fractal mirror of the characters who live and act in seperate universes, even if they all appear in the same frame.


Ballard himself said that "Pandora and the flying Dutchman" (1953), starring Ava Gardner, influenced his vision of Vermillion Sands. "Boom!" was made in 1968, at a time when many of the "Stellavista"-stories had already been written. Although I doubt that director Joseph Losey and production Designer Richard Macdonald modelled "Boom!" after Ballards ideas.

Still, the similarities between the Sissy Goforth of the movie with all the female characters who inhabit Vermillion Sands are uncanny.


I have captured about 90 stills from the not-so-great-copy I obtained of the film. Despite of the slightly murky quality I made sure to capture the most embarrassing moments in all their intoxicated beauty.
Click on any pic for bigger boom!


"Pain!!! INJECTION!!!"



Easter Island?





The arrival of the witch


Crustation


"... i was the guest artist at a relief-thing for victims of a Tycoon or Typhoon, or something."





"Blackie! DICTATION!!! Meaning of life!"






cough, cough, cough, etc.