Advertiser’s Announcement by J.G. Ballard

Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending?-Advert by J.G Ballard 1967

Between 1967 and 1970 J.G. Ballard placed five ‘advertiser’s announcements’ in Ambit, New Worlds and various continental alternative magazines. Although he was the editor at Ambit and heavily involved in New Worlds he paid the going rates out of his own pocket. Ballard stated that he wanted to eventually place them in Vogue, Paris-Match and Life magazines and even applied for an Arts Council grant to provide the necessary funding, but the idea was summarily rejected by the council. Ballard believed that the refusal was occasioned by their sniffy attitude towards advertising as an art-form: still the hesitancy to pony up public funds is understandable on several counts. Would those august publications have published the adverts considering their bizarre and controversial nature? Is advertising a suitable area for an Arts Council grant? And most pertinently of all, what exactly is Ballard selling?

The adverts feature a black and white image of a woman; the first and final photographs are of his partner Claire Churchill, later Walsh, the second is a still from Steven Dworkin’s film Alone about a woman masturbating, the third is a photograph of a woman in bondage gear that his friend the British Pop Artist Eduardo Paolozzi took and the fourth is by Les Krims; with accompanying text taken and on occasion somewhat re-worked from various chapters of The Atrocity Exhibition. As always with Ballard the motivation and effect is ambiguous. The use of the Situationist International technique of détournement would appear to place them as satires, but Ballard always had a tendency to embrace what was commonly held in contempt by the establishment. Regardless of their overt meaning we can be sure that their latent manifestation is of a deeply subversive nature.

Homage to Claire Churchill-J.G. Ballard 1967

Does the angle between two walls have a happy ending?-J.G Ballard 1967

A Neural Interval-J.G.Ballard 1970

Placental Insufficiency-J.G.Ballard 1970

Venus Smiles-J.G.Ballard 1970

 

 

The Beach

The Beach-Thea Kiros

In approximately 6 hours and 9 minutes both formats of my collection of 69 inter-related poems and short fictions Motion No. 69 will be available for purchase here. At the present moment only the e-book is available, somewhat ahead of schedule for a change.

Rather like its author, this collection is slim, elegant, charming and darkly attractive. Motion No. 69 shows also that there is truth in advertising after all. A must read for a rainy day on the beach, whether it is a Blue Monday or not.

The Sun That Barely Casts A Shadow

Do you* ever feel like you are living inside an old noir movie, where it is always night and always fucking raining? Are you haunted by false memories, existential nausea and an unbearable nostalgia for a home you have never visited?

If the above feelings sound familiar, the collection Motion No.69, to be released later this month if the auguries are correct and the stars above are aligned right, might be just the ticket**. After checking in to The Very Heaven Heavenly Hotel and playing a quick game of Shangri-La, you could be one of the fortunate few to visit room 418 on the 4706th Floor, with its spectacular view of the Mariensbad (or is it the Carlsbad?) Palace. Over the immaculate formal gardens the sun never sets and barely ever casts a shadow.  You feel like you have been here before, was it last year, yesterday or tomorrow, you can’t quite recollect, but no matter, every amnesiac moment has a vivid freshness.

*The designated You is merely a rhetorical flourish. Any resemblance to any person living or dead, or indeed fictional, imaginary, legendary or mythical, is purely coincidental.

**Purchase of Motion No.69 is not guaranteed to alleviate sadness, angst, despair, night terrors, suicidal ideation or melancholy.

 

 

A Throw of the Dice

A Throw Of The Dice Doesn’t Abolish Chance

There is a good chance that my collection Motion No. 69 will be published sometime in November, 2017. As well as providing certain recherche pleasures Motion No. 69 will disclose under a close and attentive reading the workings of Shangri-La, that game of total chance that is said to originated in Xanadu but was more probably created in the boardroom of Hilton-Tetragrammaton Pan-Dimensional Inc.

So buy the book* and then maybe you will be able to stake your claim and with the combination of a turn of a card, the spin of a wheel and the throw of the dice make your appointment with destiny. The possibilities are infinite: you could find yourself up above the clouds in the Imperial Suite at The Very Heaven Heavenly Hotel with a bed the size of Hy-Brasil or Cockaigne, sipping from a Jeroboam of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay with your significant other, or if the fates are against you end up down there alone on street level with hell around every corner. Or maybe, even more bizarrely, nothing will change at all.

*Over 18’s only. Terms and Conditions Apply. Strictly pay to play. Please gamble responsibly.  And remember, a throw of the dice doesn’t abolish chance.

The Cutting Edge

For all its influence on the visual arts and literature, advertising remains the field where Surrealism  (or its techniques anyway, the question of aims answers itself) has had the largest impact. In J.G Ballard’s (who was a former advertising copy-writer himself) 1970 experimental novel on the media landscape, The Atrocity Exhibition, which features Marilyn Monroe, JFK and Elizabeth Taylor as characters (or at least people the protogantists fantasies) there are also numerous references to the works of Dali, Magritte, Ernst, Bellmer and others. The inference is clear, the media landscape had been shaped to a large extent by Surrealism.

The clearest example of applied Surrealist techniques is the ad campaigns for cigarette brands Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut in the UK in the 70’s through to the 90’s. Faced with severe restrictions on the marketing of cigarettes; they couldn’t be shown to indicate status, youthfulness or sexual appeal and all ads had to carry the mandatory health warnings, the ad firms Collett Dickinson Pearce for Benson & Hedges and Saatchi & Saatchi for Silk Cut had to get creative. The results are some of the most iconic images ever created in advertising. The Benson & Hedges ads made use of the distintive gold packaging while Silk Cut plays with the brand name and the purple lettering on the box; the swathes of slashed silk hint at possible sexual allusions . Ironically the health warning is sometimes the only thing that alerts you to the fact that it is cigarettes being marketed.

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