Don’t Waste a Good Crisis: “If you want to know what might come next, read the memoir of ‘White’ Russian general Pyotr Wrangel, Always with Honor, about the Russian Civil War. I’m not joking.” Godzilla: “A highlight of Heisei period Godzilla movies is Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. It’s mostly a highlight for being completely bonkers Japanese nationalism. The…
Tag: JG Ballard
W҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉k҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉n҈҉҈҉d҈҉҈҉ ҈҉҈҉L҈҉҈҉i҈҉҈҉n҈҉҈҉k҈҉҈҉s҈҉҈҉: Storming the Heavens, Unfreedom, Alienation
A New Cosmist Moment: “Paradigm breakthroughs always begin with calls to great, even fantastical endeavors—to ‘storm the heavens,’ as Fyodorov once implored his followers to do. Even if Cosmism’s attempts at articulating a human project were kooky in certain respects, a great deal of tangible scientific progress emerged from its admirers. New, totalizing theories of…
ẅ̷̷̢̟͇͈̒ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊k̶̸͙̭̹͆͟ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊n̷̶̯͉̊̽̐ͦ͘d̸̡̩͍̔ͥ͜ ḻ̸͈ͧ͑̓̓̀͡i̵͓͙̱͚̎͟n̷̶̯͉̊̽̐ͦ͘k̶̸͙̭̹͆͟s̩͙͖̋͛͟: Hyper-Dimensional Perception, When Duty & Instinct are Incompatible, and the Neo-Medieval World Order
Cancel the Election: “Democracy isn’t pretty; make sure the old whore’s syphilis scars are on full display as she gracelessly expires.” Concrete and Glass: “Do you want to know why [JG] Ballard’s late 1960s and 1970s output is based? Because it’s all about unstoppable civilisational decline, and the chances of thriving, despite everything, in the…
Lost and Found in the Cartographical Matrix
I’ve been thinking about “place” a lot lately. Thinking about “place” led to me write this blog post, which got me digging through the great book Applied Ballardianism again, and a chapter called “Cartographies of the Infinite,” where author Simon Sellars contemplates whether future cities can be “tuned to produce a kind of stereoscopic urbanism.”…
W e e k e n d LINKS
music by b r e t t v a n d o n s e l Always Again Another Bloomsday: “To Blake, the evil acquired by man in the original sin is foundational for freedom and creative energy. Because it is so central to artists such as himself, he even retroactively attributes his view of…
WEEKEND LINKS
A GUIDE to IANNIS XENAKIS’S MUSIC: “When you hear Xenakis’s music – any piece of what we recognise as his mature work, starting with 1954’s Metastasis, onwards – you’re confronted with an aesthetic that seems unprecedented according to any of the frames of reference that musical works usually relate to. You won’t hear vestiges of things…
Pandemic Inventory
Seems like a lot of people are taking inventory of their pandemic experiences, so I will too. (As someone on Twitter recently joked, citing Garrison Keillor: Nothing happened to me, and now I’m going to tell you about it.) Like millions of others, I spend a lot of time alone these days. Don’t my lonely…
“A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. These situations are so Ballardian as to be in the realm of copyright infringement.”
“Twenty-first century life was already Ballardian. The rapid transition, under the new viral order, into further extremes of technological alienation has only made it more so.” https://t.co/IDnD49NXWA — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) April 1, 2020 SOURCE: Mark O’Connell, New Statesman
STEREOSCOPIC URBANISM
‘In Ballard, trends (and flaws) in architectural design are pursued to their logical extremes…the unspoken tension and psychopathology engendered by such scenarios is recycled, reheated and allowed free rein to play itself out to the bitterest of ends.’https://t.co/IbcFM5dpfU — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) March 20, 2020 SOURCE: Ballardian.com: “In a sense, Ballard’s work is about nothing but…
“…an ambiance of rampant pathology.”
An “ambiance of rampant pathology” is a great turn of phrase and also kind of Ballardianhttps://t.co/CWtjjGiTB2 — ᵗ ᵘ ⁿ ᵈ ʳ ᵃ ⁿ ᵃ ᵘ ᵗ (@tundranaut) November 9, 2019
“Existence…is the ultimate pathological state.”
“A dark pit has opened in the floor of the living room, and she can see the appetite for cruelty and murder that underpins the foundations of her domestic life.” https://t.co/o5BXxKAWo8 — ᵗ ᵘ ⁿ ᵈ ʳ ᵃ ⁿ ᵃ ᵘ ᵗ (@tundranaut) May 8, 2019