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."

Dick Docu

I tried to do without any lame dick-references in the title, but who am I kidding?!

Anyway, this is a great and long documentary about the amazing Philip K. Dick which the BBC produced and aired in 1994 as a part of its "Arena"-program.

The ill-fated Dick was one of the most prolific and visionary sci-fi authors, whose vision and impact was only beginning to be felt shortly after his death, when "Blade Runner" made him a household name.


In a way PKD is the American counterpart to J.G. Ballard. Whereas JGBs characters tend to embrace global catastrophy and social decline as a chance to find a sort of inner freedom, Dicks protagonists wander through dystopian landscapes with a piercing objectivity that offers the reader a look at the present as if seeing it through a one-way mirror.

Both authors refrain from moralizing and at times they thrill us with the idea that they actually do enjoy the situations they dreamed up for their protagonists.
While Ballard was seen as burning more bridges behind and in front of him with the release of "Crash", Dick was more or less ignored as a pessimistic sci-fi author by the American public.

The docu features has many "guest appearances" by BBC regulars such as Terry Gilliam and Elvis Costello, but there are also some acidic remarks in interviews by colleagues, such as fellow sci-fi author Thomas M. Dish, who recently decided to end his life.

The whole thing consists of six parts which you can see here:
2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Everybody will be doing it, everybody will be living inside a TV studio

Everybody will be doing it, everybody will be living inside a TV studio. That’s what the domestic home aspires to these days; the home is going to be a TV studio. We’re all going to be starring in our own sit-coms, and they’ll be strange sit-coms, too, like the inside of our heads. That’s going to come, I’m absolutely sure of that, and it’ll really shake up everything…

J.G. Ballard, quoted in ‘Interview with JGB by Andrea Juno and Vale’, RE/Search No. 8/9, 1984.