J. G. Ballard: Life & Works

[ramonmercado]

Inner Space: J G Ballard in the Seventies A Symposium

Book now

• Tel: +44 (0)1937 546546
• Email: [email protected]
• Full Price: £40.00; Under 18: £28.00Other concessions available

A day-long trip into the world of J G Ballard, plus a special preview screening of High-Rise

J G Ballard’s early 1970s writing, which includes The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Concrete Island and High-Rise, form together his greatest achievement, and exist in unique draft and manuscript form in the Ballard archive, housed at the British Library.

Ahead of the release of Ben Wheatley’s powerful film of High-Rise, in UK cinemas on 18 March, we present a day of activities to explore the author’s visionary novels, the era and the urban landscape they are set in, and the process of bringing them to the screen. The day includes a special preview screening of High-Rise.

10.30 Registration and coffee

11.00 J G Ballard in the Seventies

An exceptional panel looks at the key themes and striking images of Ballard’s 1970s oeuvre. With artist Fay Ballard, Jeanette Baxter, Anglia Ruskin University and author ofVisions and Revisions among other books on Ballard and celebrated writer Iain Sinclair, who published a book on David Cronenberg’s Crash. Chaired by Chris Hall.

12.15 Crash

A screening of Crash! (1971, 17mins) which features Ballard in the lead role. Introduced by the director of the film, Harley Cokeliss.

Followed by an introduction to the Crash archive at the British Library by curator Chris Beckett.

13.15 Lunch break

14.00 Brutalist architecture: its pleasures and its discontents

Writer and broadcaster Travis Elborough chairs a discussion on the powerful, controversial, and at their best, beautiful urban buildings characteristic of the 60s and 70s, which form a striking backdrop to Ballard’s novels of the period. Speakers include John Grindrod, author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain.

15.10 High-Rise

A special preview screening of High-Rise (Cert 15A, 118 minutes), directed by Ben Wheatley, and starring Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jeremy Irons, Sienna Miller and Elisabeth Moss.

17.20 Creating High-Rise: post-screening Q&A

Meet some of the acclaimed creative team behind the stunning visual impact of High-Rise– from its slick 70s stylings to everything that follows after.

18.30 Event closes

A special preview screening of High-Rise with Q&A, also takes place at the Library on Friday 11 March.

As an additional bonus coincides with this event; from Monday 7 March visitors to the British Library will be able to view items from the Ballard archive, including the manuscript of High-Rise, alongside props and materials from the film, on display in the Library’s free exhibition space, the Sir John Ritblat Treasures Gallery.


Details
Name: Inner Space: J G Ballard in the Seventies A Symposium
Where: Conference Centre
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB
Show map How to get to the Library
When: Sun 13 Mar 2016, 10:30 - 18:30
Price: Full Price: £40.00
Senior 60+: £32.00
Student: £28.00
Registered Unemployed: £28.00
Under 18: £28.00
Friend of the BL: £28.00
Enquiries: +44 (0)1937 546546
[email protected]

Book now

- See more at: http://www.bl.uk/events/inner-space-j-g-ballard-in-the-seventies-a-symposium#sthash.O2FpHHsY.dpuf

 

[Mythopoeika]

That sounds interesting!
I might read High-Rise and book up...mind you, I am skint right now...

 

[rynner2]

This article evaluates High Rise
JG Ballard Reading group
Nearly normal: JG Ballard's High-Rise and the 'uncanny valley'
Doctors, lecturers, architects run amok in Ballard’s tower blocks, capitalising on our fear of the weirdness that walks among us
Sam Jordison
Tuesday 15 March 2016 14.00 GMT

The “uncanny valley” is a phrase coined to describe our revulsion for things that seem very nearly human, but are not quite “right”. The term, proposed by engineering professor Masahiro Mori in 1970, is normally applied to human responses to animations, robots or computer imagery that is so recognisably like us that any tiny difference is all the more noticeable, and disconcerting or even horrifying. It’s territory in which JG Ballard seems to have spent a lot of time.

etc...

http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-ballard-high-rise-reading-group-tower-blocks

 

[Graylien]

That sounds interesting!
I might read High-Rise and book up...mind you, I am skint right now...

Get thee to a library. High Rise and Concrete Island are both hilariously grim.

 

[ramonmercado]

Ballard provides a theme for the Met Gala.

Unimaginable Wealth, Decadence, Decline: Scaling the Walled Gardens of J.G. Ballard​

Ballard's fiction is filled with spoiled elites, hoarded luxuries, and class warfare, but no easy answers or predictable outcomes...

“Ballardian” is probably not anywhere near the top of the list of potential Met Gala themes one could have reasonably expected to see in their lifetime (likely not in the top thousand or so, just behind “Borgesian” and ahead of “Barthelmian” even if we just stick to the literary B’s). Yet here we are…

When Vogue announced that the dress code for its 2024 soiree would be “The Garden of Time,” I initially didn’t clock it as a reference to the J.G. Ballard story, and any random photograph taken from the night does little to reinforce the connection. Any reference to the late, great author of dystopian science fiction with an emphasis on urban surrealism was quickly supplanted by the Gala’s more digestible theme: “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” (though the relationship between the gala’s theme and its dress code is notoriously ambiguous). Fey apparel, floral garments, and even some clock and hourglass symbolism were all apparent on the red carpet—visions of Ballardian horrors of modern life, less so.

The irony of this year’s theme was not lost on those familiar with the story. The Met Gala, for all its charity and celebration of the arts, has become a veritable Olympics of Opulence, a night when unimaginable wealth is flaunted on the museum steps in New York’s thrumming heart. Ballard’s “The Garden of Time” tells the story of a rich count and countess living a charmed life in a walled garden surrounded by magnificent art, baroque architecture, and near-total seclusion. It is an idyllic manse where even “the air seemed brighter, the sun warmer” while the surrounding lands are “always dull and remote.” Count Axel, the keeper of the castle, looks over the ramparts one evening to see an army of torch-wielding commonfolk presumably coming to redistribute his wealth by force. The count then goes into his garden to pluck a crystalized “time flower” that, once picked, bursts apart and turns back time, pushing the mob deeper into the horizon. Axel and the Countess savor their remaining time together as they exhaust their supply of flowers, and the story ends with the mob breaching the walls only to find that the castle is a creaking husk, long abandoned—the rubble ruled by two lonely statues, a monument to our handsome couple. ...

https://reactormag.com/unimaginable...ne-scaling-the-walled-gardens-of-j-g-ballard/

 

[chanubi]

I read High-Rise recently. Boy, that was depressing.

 

[Steven]

Crash (the film) seemed to me to receive an unfairly harsh or - tellingly - dismissive hearing from movie critics; perhaps because it - and, I assume, Ballard's story - exposed some uncomfortable possible truths.