OPENING LINE:“Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.” If The Drowned World was the book which cemented Ballard’s literary reputation (in Britain, at least), then Crash was almost certainly the one which made him a non-entity in America’s eyes. Following on from publisher Nelson Doubleday’s outrage at an earlier Ballard story, ‘Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan’, Crash ensured JGB remained on the periphery of the US sci-fi scene. In any case, it is doubtful whether this is ’science fiction’, in the traditional sense. It tells the story of the narrator, ‘James Ballard’, the ‘hoodlum scientist’ Vaughan, and a supporting cast of curiously one-dimensional characters, as they follow their peculiar obsessions along the hyperreal motorways of England. Tuned in to police radios, they descend on the scenes of car crashes, depositing their semen and vaginal mucous on torn flesh and twisted metal. Ultimately, Vaughan desires ‘a union of semen and engine coolant’, splattered in world-wide ‘autogeddon’. Crash epitomises Ballard’s ‘death of affect’ theories — it is Inner Space in perpetual motion. The media landscape, with its aestheticising of violence, is the novel’s main character. The car, the first and still most recognisable symbol of mass production, provides the eternal metaphor. Crash was Ballard’s first novel in seven years (The Crystal World from 1966 was the last). Of course he’d been busy writing short stories during that time, and because of that concentrated span many people regard Ballard’s strength as being in the shorter format, even though he’s written novels exclusively for the last 20-odd years. Crash was the real deal, though, a savage, cool, clinical sex-and-technology masterpiece. Here, Ballard got everything absolutely right: the attitude, the language, the vision, the metaphor (death of affect; media landscapes; dehumanisation), all colliding in a prescient headspin that still has the power to enhrall 32 years on.
What is there new to say about car culture that hasn't already been said? My intention with this blog is to address this question in consideration of my own personal history and experience of the motor car. Looking at cars I have owned and other car history within my family. Searching the internet for car statistics and relevant contextual information, referencing publications on car culture with particular reference to Autopia: Cars and Culture - Edited by Peter Wollen and Joe Kerr (Reaktion 2002) - Vrrooom! Vrrooom! Hans Aarsman (NAi Uitgevers - Nederlands Fotomuseum 2003) amongst others.
To some degree this excercise is inspired by my love/hate relationship with the automobile; The costs and other traumas of running a car, a nostalgia for a "Golden age of Motoring" which I am too young to have experienced firsthand, the desire and passion associated with cars (including explorations of Classic car ownership), notions of personal space associated with the car (Road Rage), ephemera, in particular finding uses (in an art context) for the materials I have accumulated over the years which link directly with car culture, other artists with a particular interest in the subject and other stuff I may find along the way.
Using these materials and following threads explored in previous works (particularly "The A-Z of Anger Management") I shall attempt to create a body of work, including: Photography, Video, Digital Images, Model making and set building and maybe even a bit of essay writing!
In part this is an exploration of a personal psychogeography of car culture, using my 1950 Geographers map of Birmingham to guide me I shall drift along the highways and byways.
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OPENING LINE:“Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash.”
If The Drowned World was the book which cemented Ballard’s literary reputation (in Britain, at least), then Crash was almost certainly the one which made him a non-entity in America’s eyes. Following on from publisher Nelson Doubleday’s outrage at an earlier Ballard story, ‘Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan’, Crash ensured JGB remained on the periphery of the US sci-fi scene.
In any case, it is doubtful whether this is ’science fiction’, in the traditional sense. It tells the story of the narrator, ‘James Ballard’, the ‘hoodlum scientist’ Vaughan, and a supporting cast of curiously one-dimensional characters, as they follow their peculiar obsessions along the hyperreal motorways of England. Tuned in to police radios, they descend on the scenes of car crashes, depositing their semen and vaginal mucous on torn flesh and twisted metal. Ultimately, Vaughan desires ‘a union of semen and engine coolant’, splattered in world-wide ‘autogeddon’.
Crash epitomises Ballard’s ‘death of affect’ theories — it is Inner Space in perpetual motion. The media landscape, with its aestheticising of violence, is the novel’s main character. The car, the first and still most recognisable symbol of mass production, provides the eternal metaphor.
Crash was Ballard’s first novel in seven years (The Crystal World from 1966 was the last). Of course he’d been busy writing short stories during that time, and because of that concentrated span many people regard Ballard’s strength as being in the shorter format, even though he’s written novels exclusively for the last 20-odd years.
Crash was the real deal, though, a savage, cool, clinical sex-and-technology masterpiece. Here, Ballard got everything absolutely right: the attitude, the language, the vision, the metaphor (death of affect; media landscapes; dehumanisation), all colliding in a prescient headspin that still has the power to enhrall 32 years on.
Source: http://www.ballardian.com/
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