{"id":4247,"date":"2022-07-17T06:56:35","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T06:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-blog-lb-526867726.eu-central-1.elb.amazonaws.com\/?p=5186"},"modified":"2022-08-05T09:32:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T09:32:01","slug":"concrete-island-reading-ballard-through-digital-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.niio.com\/blog\/concrete-island-reading-ballard-through-digital-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Concrete Island: reading Ballard through digital art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pau Waelder<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literature and the visual arts have always been close allies. The words of poets, novelists, and philosophers have inspired painters, sculptors, and multimedia creators, while the images, objects, and experiences created by visual artists have in turn moved writers to imagine stories and fantastic worlds. The examples of this creative exchange would be endless, not only among artists, as is the case of Maria Turner, a character in Paul Auster\u2019s celebrated novel Leviathan <\/em>(1992) that is directly inspired by the work of artist Sophie Calle, but also among curators, this being the case of the current edition of the Venice Biennale, whose curator Cecilia Alemani named after Leonora Carrington\u2019s book The Milk of Dreams<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In light of these fruitful collaborations among wordsmiths and image makers, we initiate a series of artcasts on Niio that bring together a variety of artworks in the form of a reading or illustration of a novel. The selection is carried out by extracting from the text the themes that relate to certain artworks, the images it evokes, and conversely how the artworks can further explore ideas or situations that are merely suggested or briefly described in the book. The selection also draws connections among the artworks themselves, independently of their connection with the novel, and opens up new forms of interpretation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first artcast in this series is dedicated to J.G. Ballard\u2019s <\/strong>Concrete Island<\/em><\/strong> <\/em>(1974), the second installment in his \u201curban disaster trilogy,\u201d initiated with Crash <\/em>(1973) and followed by High Rise <\/em>(1975). The novel tells the story of Robert Maitland, a wealthy architect who has a car accident that leaves him stranded in an abandoned area between intersecting motorways in London. Trapped in the median strip, he cannot get help from passing drivers or the inhabitants of the high rises nearby, and must struggle to survive. As time passes, the embankment gradually becomes his \u201cisland,\u201d a place where he feels safe in his loneliness, a voluntary castaway who may not want to be rescued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ballard took inspiration from Daniel Defoe\u2019s Robinson Crusoe <\/em>(1719), the quintessential story about a castaway, and replaced the exotic setting of a remote island off the coast of Trinidad with a waste ground in a motorway intersection. In the introduction to the 1994 edition of the novel, the author emphasizes this connection and how a romantic tropical fantasy can become a mundane urban nightmare:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe day-dream of being marooned on a desert island still has enormous appeal, however small our chances of actually finding ourselves stranded on a coral atoll in the pacific. [\u2026] The Pacific atoll may not be available, but there are other islands far nearer to home, some of them only a few steps from the pavements we tread every day. [\u2026] As we drive across a motorway intersection, through the elaborately signalled landscape that seems to anticipate every possible hazard, we glimpse triangles of waste ground screened off by steep embankments. What would happen if, by some freak mischance, we suffered a blow-out and plunged over the guard-rail onto a forgotten island of rubble and weeds, out of sight of the surveilllance cameras?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>J.G. Ballard, Introduction to Concrete Island<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The story begins with a blow-out that causes Maitland\u2019s car to lose its direction and plunge down an embankment next to the M4 motorway. By leaving the signposted path of the asphalt road, the architect veers off his normal life and even the society he knew. What happens next should be understood as a fable, a somewhat implausible scenario that conveys a deep truth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n