JG Ballard - the tributes continue

Several more articles on Ballard have appeared in recent days, and The Guardian also published the author's final short story, "The Dying Fall",  in which the Leaning Tower of Pisa collapses (did it fall or was it pushed?) and is replaced by a replica.

One of the latest pieces to appear is a short article by artist Tacita Dean, connecting Ballard to Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty". Fellow author, Michael Moorcock, as well as Ballard's daughter Bea Ballard have also published tributes.

It is interesting that in all of the articles, no mention is made of the experimental film rendering of "The Atrocity Exhibition", directed by Jonathan Weiss, and released on dvd in 2006, including an audio commentary by Ballard himself.

It is now presumably just a matter of time before Hollywood gets their hands on more of Ballard's material, to follow up on Empire of The Sun (Spielberg) and Crash (Cronenberg), neither of which actually manage to be anything like as evocative as Ballard's writing.

J.G. Ballard 1930 - 2009

J.G. Ballard, one of the greatest writers of late twentieth century fiction and an acute chronicler of post-industrial culture and society, died on Sunday 19th. April. See articles and obituary on The Guardian website.

10:50-11:15 by Sabina Jacobsson

10:50 - 11:15, A video on YouTube by Oslo-based artist Sabina Jacobsson; a performance taking place amidst passengers in the concourse of Oslo Central Station.

The Good Life

The Good Life is an exhibition due to open at The Arnolfini, Bristol, in april, in which artists Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans together with architects 51N4E have re-imagined the Arnolfini building as a complex of luxury apartments. The project reads as an ironic take on the schemes of urban regeneration that have been typical in Western European cities since the eighties. Others involved in the project include BUU affiliate and sound artist Justin Bennett. The exhibition is connected to Arnolfini's season on Futurology.

Flyover

Those helicopters: what are they looking for? Where do they come from and where do they go? Apart from the flying doctor/ambulance helicopters, which are very recognizable, we don't really know whose helicopters they are or what they are doing there. Like constant paranoid impulses above our heads, they form an alternative architecture of the city sky.

All In Your Mind

It's All In Your Mind; a small photo series taken on a short walk through the centre of Bergen. One image somehow always leads to another; taken together they form a kind of sentence, or a set of links, a bridge from one idea or one condition to another.

Soft Manipulation

Soft Manipulation - Who Is Afraid of The New Now? is the title of an exhibition that opened on Friday 20 March at Galleri 3,14, Bergen. The exhibition was produced and originally shown at Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'art Contemporain and is curated by Zoran Eric (Serbia), Maria Lind (Sweden) and Enrico Lunghi (Italy). The exhibition examines the climate of fear, paranoia, surveillance and confinement that is characteristic of so much of contemporary life. Artists from around 12 countries are represented with works across a range of media, though with a predominance of video and photographic projects.