J.G. Ballard: Born in Shanghai November 15, 1930, James
Graham Ballard
spent the first 15 years of his life in China. Interned in a
Japanese camp
during World War II, he was repatriated to England at the age of
sixteen. After
studying medicine at Cambridge, he sold his first "speculative
fiction" story
to New Worlds in 1956 and began writing a series of planetary
disaster
novels, ultimately focusing on the inner landscape in
psychopathological
classics such as Crash and High-Rise. In 1987 Steven Spielberg
made a movie of his best-selling autobiographical work, Empire of
the Sun.
For the past 30 years J.G. Ballard has lived in Shepperton,
England, home of
the famous film studios. {J.G. Ballard died April 19, 2009 in
London, U.K.]
Around 1978 Mark Pauline, an Eckerd College, Florida
graduate and First Generation Punk Rock Original (he went to school
with Exene
Cervenka, founder of X; Exene's sister Muriel; Pee-Wee Herman aka
Paul Reubens;
and Punk Filmmaker Gordon Stevenson) moved to San Francisco. The
abandoned
factories of the South of Market area, filled with rusting
machinery, inspired
Mr. Pauline, an experienced welder and metal fabricator, to create
an Art based
on the recycling of industrial technology. He incorporated a
knowledge of
Futurism: the first Art Movement to extoll the beauty of speed,
machines, and
war; and Dada/Surrealism, which championed the Absurd, Black Humor,
the
Imagination and the Dream. Mr. Pauline has cited Raymond Rousssel's
two books, Impressions
of Africa and Locus Solus, as being particularly inspiring.
Almost singlehandedly a new darkly humorous and savage "Art
Genre" was created: MACHINE PERFORMANCE ART. Beyond creating mere
"Art
Machines," Mr. Pauline deployed a kind of multi-dimensional
"Maximalist"
spirit, generating as many metaphors and surprises as possible,
while always
probing the boundaries of "freedom." Authoritarian/totalitarian
conventions and
cliches are frequently lampooned in shows bearing titles such as "A
Bitter
Message of Hopeless Grief." Tolerances of the Human Body are
musingly tested
with smoke, fluids, loud explosions, rocket launchings, fiery
blasts, acrid
smells and other phenomena, while one-of-a-kind Menacing Machine
personalities
express themselves to the limits of their arcane functioning.
State-of-the-art
technological innovations involving tele-robotics and computers
are
incorporated into the continually evolving show productions,
described as
modern-day Hieronymus Bosch landscapes. Many highly-skilled and
unique artists/scientists
are drawn to collaborate in the realization of SRL projects.
The best Art is by nature prophetic, and the Machine Art
Performances of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) poetically
illustrate the
psychopathological possibilities latent in modern technological
innovation and
heavy industry fabrication. Every dream, after all, deserves its
nightmare.
Fusing Art, Technology and a kind of Burroughsian/Ballardian
sensibility, SRL
creates trail-blazing, uncompromising, fabulist Art which will
impact far into
the future. And Mark Pauline has long been a J.G. Ballard fan,
visiting the
visionary author and interviewing him in the 1980s. His interview
appears for
the first time in J.G. Ballard Conversations. Mr. Pauline/SRL has
also
been featured in Search & Destroy #11, the RE/Search #1-2-3
tabloids, the Industrial Culture Handbook, and Pranks.
Graeme Revell was born in New Zealand Oct 23, 1955.
He
graduated from The University of Auckland with degrees in economics
and
politics. A classically trained pianist and French horn player, he
worked as a
regional planner in Australia and Indonesia and as an orderly in an
Australian
psychiatric hospital.
A rare book collector, futurist, and tireless researcher
into the dark side of the human psyche, Graeme Revell/SPK has been
featured in
the RE/Search #1-2-3 tabloids, the Industrial Culture Handbook,
RE/Search #8/9: J.G. Ballard, and most recently J.G. Ballard
Conversations. Over the past 23 years Mr. Revell has interviewed
J.G.
Ballard several times for RE/Search.
Ask a Question About this Product More... |