J.G. Ballard Conversations

J.G. Ballard: Born in Shanghai November 15, 1930, James Graham Ballardspent the first 15 years of his life in China. Interned in a Japanese campduring World War II, he was repatriated to England at the age of sixteen. Afterstudying medicine at Cambridge, he sold his first "speculative fiction" storyto New Worlds in 1956 and began writing a series of planetary disasternovels, ultimately focusing on the inner landscape in psychopathologicalclassics such as Crash and High-Rise. In 1987 Steven Spielbergmade 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 ofthe famous film studios. {J.G. Ballard died April 19, 2009 in London, U.K.] Mark Pauline is the founder of Survival Research Laboratories(SRL) whose first show was in February 1979 in San Francisco's North Beach atAlex's gas station. He has many SRL machine performance videos available onYouTube, and is currently searching for a site to put on yet another show. Around 1978 Mark Pauline, an Eckerd College, Floridagraduate and First Generation Punk Rock Original (he went to school with ExeneCervenka, founder of X; Exene's sister Muriel; Pee-Wee Herman aka Paul Reubens;and Punk Filmmaker Gordon Stevenson) moved to San Francisco. The abandonedfactories of the South of Market area, filled with rusting machinery, inspiredMr. Pauline, an experienced welder and metal fabricator, to create an Art basedon the recycling of industrial technology. He incorporated a knowledge ofFuturism: the first Art Movement to extoll the beauty of speed, machines, andwar; and Dada/Surrealism, which championed the Absurd, Black Humor, theImagination and the Dream. Mr. Pauline has cited Raymond Rousssel's two books, Impressionsof Africa and Locus Solus, as being particularly inspiring. Almost singlehandedly a new darkly humorous and savage "ArtGenre" was created: MACHINE PERFORMANCE ART. Beyond creating mere "ArtMachines," Mr. Pauline deployed a kind of multi-dimensional "Maximalist"spirit, generating as many metaphors and surprises as possible, while alwaysprobing the boundaries of "freedom." Authoritarian/totalitarian conventions andcliches are frequently lampooned in shows bearing titles such as "A BitterMessage of Hopeless Grief." Tolerances of the Human Body are musingly testedwith smoke, fluids, loud explosions, rocket launchings, fiery blasts, acridsmells and other phenomena, while one-of-a-kind Menacing Machine personalitiesexpress themselves to the limits of their arcane functioning. State-of-the-arttechnological innovations involving tele-robotics and computers areincorporated into the continually evolving show productions, described asmodern-day Hieronymus Bosch landscapes. Many highly-skilled and unique artists/scientistsare drawn to collaborate in the realization of SRL projects. The best Art is by nature prophetic, and the Machine ArtPerformances of Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) poetically illustrate thepsychopathological possibilities latent in modern technological innovation andheavy industry fabrication. Every dream, after all, deserves its nightmare.Fusing Art, Technology and a kind of Burroughsian/Ballardian sensibility, SRLcreates trail-blazing, uncompromising, fabulist Art which will impact far intothe future. And Mark Pauline has long been a J.G. Ballard fan, visiting thevisionary author and interviewing him in the 1980s. His interview appears forthe first time in J.G. Ballard Conversations. Mr. Pauline/SRL has alsobeen featured in Search & Destroy #11, the RE/Search #1-2-3tabloids, the Industrial Culture Handbook, and Pranks. Graeme Revell was born in New Zealand Oct 23, 1955. Hegraduated from The University of Auckland with degrees in economics andpolitics. A classically trained pianist and French horn player, he worked as aregional planner in Australia and Indonesia and as an orderly in an Australianpsychiatric hospital. Graeme Revell was a founder of SPK (Surgical Penis Klinik;Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv; System Planning Korporation), a 70sIndustrial Music group, for which he sang, played keyboards and percussion.Their single "In Flagrante Delicto" formed the basis for his first moviesoundtrack, Dead Calm, which won an Australian Film Institute award.Since then he's composed almost a hundred soundtracks, including The Crow, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, The Craft, The Basketball Diaries, Chinese Box, and Sin City. He also composed for CSI: Miami. A rare book collector, futurist, and tireless researcherinto the dark side of the human psyche, Graeme Revell/SPK has been featured inthe RE/Search #1-2-3 tabloids, the Industrial Culture Handbook, RE/Search #8/9: J.G. Ballard, and most recently J.G. BallardConversations. Over the past 23 years Mr. Revell has interviewed J.G.Ballard several times for RE/Search.