#simon sellars

[sun-death]

Atrocity [Exhibition] examines the ceaseless flow of media imagery and asks what happens on the subconscious level when we watch disparate TV images in rapid succession: actors making love in a soap opera, followed by documentary footage of a child dying of disease, followed by a mindless ad for car insurance, followed by the beheading of a hostage in some guerrilla war, followed by an ad for luxury apartments, followed by a news report of a tsunami sweeping away an entire town. Ballard compares the process to the act of dreaming. Just as the sleeping brain weaves together fantastical narratives from the memories of random events, so too the waking mind must knit together narratives from the new overlay of media fictions it encounters.

Simon Sellars, Applied Ballardianism

[salvatriceaverse]

When my shift ended, I commenced the long walk home from the warehouse. The weather was hot and dusty, and the deadly rays from the high sun reflected off the vicious concrete expanses that passed for public space. The intense glare, blotting out all life and colour, was like an atomic flash, and I half-expected my shadow to be seared onto the bleak pavement. I passed unpeopled industrial areas, hissing power substations and cavernous breaker yards. I negotiated the back streets that surrounded an infestation of dun-coloured brick factoryettes, each small and foreboding, with iron-bar windows, like private torture dens rented out to the highest bidder to do whatever they liked behind closed doors.

Simon Sellars, Applied Ballardianism

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

How many ghosts pass through one’s own body at any one time? How many wi-fi signals? How many time travellers?

 - Simon Sellars

[dk-thrive]

How many ghosts pass through one’s own body at any one time? How many wi-fi signals? How many time travellers?

Simon Sellars, Applied Ballardianism: Memoir from a Parallel Universe (Urbanomic, December 21, 2018) (via Whiskey River)

[kaggsy59]

A Covid-reading round up - Part One!

2023 ended somewhat in disarray at the Ramblings, thank to the untimely arrival of Covid, and it left me struggling to read at points as well as finding reviewing perhaps a little difficult… I did manage to find my way into a few books eventually, and so I thought I would do a couple of short round-up posts, just to bring things up to date, and today I want to focus on some random reads that I…

[spilladabalia]

Alex Harvey - Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody

[princesssarisa]

Opera on YouTube, Part 2

Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)

Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 1973 (Knut Skram, Ileana Cotrubas, Kiri Te Kanawa, Benjamin Luxon; conducted by John Pritchard; English subtitles)

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle studio film, 1976 (Hermann Prey, Mirella Freni, Kiri Te Kanawa, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; conducted by Karl Böhm; English subtitles) – Acts I and II, Acts III and IV

Tokyo National Theatre, 1980 (Hermann Prey, Lucia Popp, Gundula Janowitz, Bernd Weikl; conducted by Karl Böhm; Japanese subtitles)

Théâtre du Châtelet, 1993 (Bryn Terfel, Alison Hagley, Hillevi Martinpelto, Rodney Gilfry; conducted by John Eliot Gardiner; Italian subtitles)

Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 1994 (Gerald Finley, Alison Hagley, Renée Fleming, Andreas Schmidt; conducted by Bernard Haitink; English subtitles)

Zürich Opera House, 1996 (Carlos Chaussón, Isabel Rey, Eva Mei, Rodney Gilfry; conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; English subtitles)

Berlin State Opera, 2005 (Lauri Vasar, Anna Prohaska, Dorothea Röschmann, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo; conducted by Gustavo Dudamel; French subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 2006 (Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Anna Netrebko, Dorothea Röschmann, Bo Skovhus; conducted by Nikolas Harnoncourt; English subtitles) – Acts I and II, Acts III and IV

Teatro all Scala, 2006 (Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Diana Damrau, Marcella Orasatti Talamanca, Pietro Spagnoli; conducted by Gérard Korsten; English and Italian subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 2015 (Adam Plachetka, Martina Janková, Anett Fritsch, Luca Pisaroni; conducted by Dan Ettinger; no subtitles)

Tosca

Carmine Gallone studio film, 1956 (Franca Duval dubbed by Maria Caniglia, Franco Corelli, Afro Poli dubbed by Giangiacomo Guelfi; conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis; no subtitles)

Gianfranco de Bosio film, 1976 (Raina Kabaivanska, Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes; conducted by Bruno Bartoletti; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1978 (Shirley Verrett, Luciano Pavarotti, Cornell MacNeil; conducted by James Conlon; no subtitles)

Arena di Verona, 1984 (Eva Marton, Jaume Aragall, Ingvar Wixell; conducted by Daniel Oren; no subtitles)

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2004 (Daniela Dessí, Fabio Armiliato, Ruggero Raimondi; conducted by Maurizio Benini; English subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2011 (Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, Bryn Terfel; conducted by Antonio Pappano; English subtitles)

Finnish National Opera, 2018 (Ausrinė Stundytė, Andrea Carè, Tuomas Pursio; conducted by Patrick Fournillier; English subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala 2019 (Anna Netrebko, Francesco Meli, Luca Salsi; conducted by Riccardo Chailly; Hungarian subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 2019 (Sondra Radvanovsky, Piotr Beczala, Thomas Hampson; conducted by Marco Armiliato; English subtitles)

Ópera de las Palmas, 2024 (Erika Grimaldi, Piotr Beczala, George Gagnidze; conducted by Ramón Tebar; no subtitles)

Don Giovanni

Salzburg Festival, 1954 (Cesare Siepi, Otto Edelmann, Elisabeth Grümmer, Lisa della Casa; conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler; English subtitles)

Giacomo Vaccari studio film, 1960 (Mario Petri, Sesto Bruscantini, Teresa Stich-Randall, Leyla Gencer; conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli; no subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 1987 (Samuel Ramey, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Julia Varady; conducted by Herbert von Karajan; no subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala, 1987 (Thomas Allen, Claudio Desderi, Edita Gruberova, Ann Murray; conducted by Riccardo Muti; English subtitles)

Peter Sellars studio film, 1990 (Eugene Perry, Herbert Perry, Dominique Labelle, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson; conducted by Craig Smith; English subtitles)

Teatro Comunale di Ferrara, 1997 (Simon Keenlyside, Bryn Terfel, Carmela Remigio, Anna Caterina Antonacci; conducted by Claudio Abbado; no subtitles) – Act I, Act II

Zürich Opera, 2000 (Rodney Gilfry, László Polgár, Isabel Rey, Cecilia Bartoli; conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt; English subtitles)

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2002 (Peter Mattei, Gilles Cachemaille, Alexandra Deshorties, Mirielle Delunsch; conducted by Daniel Harding; no subtitles)

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2006 (Carlos Álvarez, Lorenzo Regazzo, Maria Bayo, Sonia Ganassi; conducted by Victor Pablo Pérez; English subtitles)

Festival Aix-en-Provence, 2017 (Philippe Sly, Nahuel de Pierro, Eleonora Burratto, Isabel Leonard; conducted by Jérémie Rohrer; English subtitles)

Madama Butterfly

Mario Lanfranchi studio film, 1956 (Anna Moffo, Renato Cioni; conducted by Oliviero de Fabritiis; no subtitles)

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle studio film, 1974 (Mirella Freni, Plácido Domingo; conducted by Herbert von Karajan; English subtitles)

New York City Opera, 1982 (Judith Haddon, Jerry Hadley; conducted by Christopher Keene; English subtitles)

Frédéric Mitterand film, 1995 (Ying Huang, Richard Troxell; conducted by James Conlon; English subtitles)

Arena di Verona, 2004 (Fiorenza Cedolins, Marcello Giordani; conducted by Daniel Oren; Spanish subtitles)

Sferisterio Opera Festival, 2009 (Raffaela Angeletti, Massimiliano Pisapia; conducted by Daniele Callegari; no subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 2017 (Maria José Siri, Murat Karahan; conducted by Jonathan Darlington; no subtitles)

Wichita Grand Opera, 2017 (Yunnie Park, Kirk Dougherty; conducted by Martin Mazik; English subtitles)

Teatro San Carlo, 2019 (Evgenia Muraveva, Saimir Pirgu; conducted by Gabriele Ferro; no subtitles)

Rennes Opera House, 2022 (Karah Son, Angelo Villari; conducted by Rudolf Piehlmayer; French subtitles)

[rejectedreligion1]

RR Pod E28 P2 Bob Cluness - An Esoteric Menagerie... In Part 2, we sit with the concept of accelerationism, how it is occultural in its original form (in Bob’s opinion), its problems, its appropriation by far-right groups, and the related sticky problems of capitalism and neoliberalism that are currently associated with accelerationist thinking in these circles. The conversation from here continues to expand. Bob also discusses the explosion of digital technologies and how contemporary spiritual currents and esoteric movements are enmeshed with technology. This leads us into a more detailed exploration of the CCRU and conspiracy theories, as well as the irony of how the esoteric concept of perennialism (or the idea that there is one everlasting Truth with a capitol T), has gained traction with some magical practitioners. As a little tangent, we also talk about trauma, as this is the ‘elephant in the room’ when discussing Slenderman, as well as the current focus by many on ‘healing’ and how esoteric currents AND neoliberalist viewpoints have also influenced the discourse around healing and wellness. Lastly, Bob shares his current work into the works of JG Ballard and Simon Sellars. Bob sees these works as esoteric texts that add to his interests of researching not only historiographical aspects, but also what is happening now in modern esoteric currents.

[scifictional]

Among Friends Part 3: Decoherence

Among Friends Part 3: Decoherence “A time-travelling alt-history blend of William Burroughs & Philip k. dick… illustrated using the dream sorcerer midjourney…  form follows function at the gates of hell!”  Simon Sellars, Author of Code Beast & Applied Ballardianism Matthew is sent on a mission to the desert where he discovers the visionary work of land artist Robert Powers just as Valentina…

[sun-death]

Lost in the mantra of stylised violence, Ballard hypnotised himself, exorcising his grief with the ritual repetition of automobile trauma, exploring it from every conceivable angle across every artistic discipline available to him. But isn’t it the case that artists dabbling in the black arts, mediators between worlds, tend to lose themselves in the glare after flying too close to the sun? For incantations of this kind, repeated often enough, can bring something back with them when the voyager, the cosmonaut of inner space, re-enters our world. There are ruptures in space-time. Matter collides and there is fallout, like a Sumerian demon woken from the dead and hungry for souls.

Simon Sellars, Applied Ballardianism

[salvatriceaverse]

From time to time, Ballard took his holidays in France. One day, walking along Utah Beach in Normandy, scene of the Allied landing on D-Day, he noticed an edifice in the near distance, partially obscured by mist. It was a bunker, part of the Atlantic Wall, and his immediate thought was that it was like the pyramids, that is, eternal, a structure completely outside of time. The bunker’s decrepitude pitched it beyond history. Its modernist form had been corroded by urine, ossified faeces and the campfire remains left by decades of tramps. But within that form, or rather within its decay, Ballard had glimpsed an echo of contemporary England, since the bunker recalled the crumbling high-rise blocks and motorway overpasses back home, designed by bored planners indifferent to the long-term demands of a socially inclusive, robust urban form.

Simon Sellars, Applied Ballardianism

[hijikahowuvi]

Simon singh big bang pdf

 SIMON SINGH BIG BANG PDF >> Download vk.cc/c7jKeU

  SIMON SINGH BIG BANG PDF >> Leia online bit.do/fSmfG

           A teoria do Big Bang entende que a origem do Universo se deu por meio de uma em: botetuc.wikispaces.com/file/view/Big-Bang+-+Simon+Singh.pdf. Em 1996, Singh coproduziu e dirigiu um premiado documentário sobre o mesmo tema exibido na BBC Horizon. Ele também é autor de O livro dos códigos e Big Bang. Richard Dawkins, conforme relatado por Singh, Simon - Big Bang - Editora Record - Rio de Janeiro / São Paulo - 2006. ISBN: 85-01-07213-3 (pág. 459).São muitos os livros que prometem revelar os mistérios do universo em suas páginas. Em BIG BANG, Simon Singh de fato explica a teoria do Big Bang e In this amazingly comprehensible history of the universe, Simon Singh decodes the mystery behind the Big Bang theory, lading us through the development of PDF - Big Bang. São muitos os livros que prometem revelar os mistérios do universo em suas páginas. Em BIG BANG, Simon Singh de fato explica a teoria do Big 2, June, 1991, pp. 264-277. SELLARS, Wilfrid. Empirismo e Filosofia da Mente. Petrópolis: Vozes, 2008. SINGH, Simon. Big Bang. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2006. Do mesmo autor dos best-sellers O último teorema de Fermat, O livro dos códigos e Big Bang, todos publicados pela Editora Record. Simon Singh é Ph.D. em criação ao Big Bang. São Paulo. Companhia das Letras SINGH, Simon. O Ultimo teorema de Fermat Big-bang aos buracos negros. Rio de Janeiro. disponível em: www2.tate.org.uk/turner/tp_unkownturner.pdf Simon Singh's book Big Bang review, From the Big Bang to the Eternal universe.

https://www.tumblr.com/hijikahowuvi/696764560347217920/kitaab-pdf, https://www.tumblr.com/hijikahowuvi/696764715597168640/ks-brar-book-in-punjabi-pdf, https://www.tumblr.com/hijikahowuvi/696764292492558336/winrelais-crack-for-gta, https://www.tumblr.com/hijikahowuvi/696764560347217920/kitaab-pdf, https://www.tumblr.com/hijikahowuvi/696764560347217920/kitaab-pdf.

[agtfm]

America's Got Talent | Season 17 | Auditions 4

Cody and Jay are back to unscramble and solve the puzzle of America's Got Talent Season 17 Auditions 4. We're glad Simon didn't stop us down in the middle of the podcast, but we might have done a quick change in the middle. Listen and see what happens.

Cubcakes Dance Crew

Ethan Jan

Kristen Cruz

Chris James

Connor King

Lace Larrabee

Janick Holste

Kieran Rhodes

Kristy Sellars

Manny D'Mago

Justin Rupple

The Cline Twins

The Glamour Aussies

Testa

Mayyas

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About AGT Time Podcast

AGT Time Podcast is a weekly podcast covering the hit NBC talent competition America's Got Talent. The hosts, Cody Patterson & Jay Bock recap each episode during the regular season. During the offseason, we do rewatches of older seasons, have guest interviews, or review movies. AGT Commenter makes a frequent appearance on the podcast and gives his deep insight into America's Got Talent. 

The podcast is typically recorded on Thursday nights and released on Mondays.

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#AGT #AmericasGotTalent

Download this episode!

[prometheanvisions]

RM: Immediately in The Drowned World, you have the fictional theory of ‘neuronics’ playing a really important role. You have to buy into that theoretical position to be compelled by the story. This is what theory fiction means to me. It’s not a genre but more a question, or even a problem: in what different ways can the two cross over, and in what ways to they need each other?[1]

Two questions come to mind when discussing the above quote by Robin Mackay, itself a response to Simon Sellars’s Applied Ballardianism (which has dethroned Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia as the archetypal “theory-fiction” text). 1) What is Ballard’s role in the development of this “question” of theory-fiction? And 2) What does theory-fiction mean in relation to this text?

First of all, Ballard is responsible (directly and indirectly) for many of the concepts that were incorporated and built upon in the earliest ruminations on theory-fiction. I am here thinking of Mark Fisher’s Flatline Constructs, which places Ballard in a rhizome connecting him to Baudrillard, McLuhan, Freud, William Gibson, “Deleuze-Guattari” and others. Central to both Fisher and Sellars’s understandings of theory-fiction is Ballard’s characterisation of inner space, as a Spinozistic interpretation of bodies as capable of both affecting and being affected. As sites of pure Event, bodies are inseparable from the landscapes they inhabit, and so Ballard’s “inner” is in fact a folding-out onto “outer” ground; a cybernetics, or, more precisely, a geo-traumatics.  In The Drowned World, we see the submerged landscape producing psychological and physiological symptoms within the bodies it contains; in The Atrocity Exhibition, the same kinds of changes are apparent, though this time, they are brought about via immersion within the “media landscape”. Ballard conceives of mediatization as a  generalisation of trauma, evoked through the repetition of violent and unprecedented images, and for which the body experiences schizophrenic breakdown and overspill of affect. Ballard’s T- character(s) in The Atrocity Exhibition attempt a form of “catastrophe management” through repetition and re-enactment of televised events: the Kennedy assassination, the Monroe car crash, and so on. These rituals are simultaneously themselves responses to the traumas brought on through mediatization, attempts (by Ballard and his characters) to represent these events and their associated affects as the only legitimate and rational response, and a continuation of the logic of breakdown – a positive experiencing of the trauma mode as a deterriorialization, leading to inorganic breakthrough.[2]

These ideas are what make Ballard’s key works (The Drowned World, The Atrocity Exhibition, and Crash) theory-fiction: the texts cannot be approached without engaging with them on these terms. Sellars would concur. His explanation for the experimental form adopted by Applied Ballardianism is that it is the result of trying to faithfully capture and respond to a particular Ballard quote: “The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume it is a complete fiction – conversely, the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads.”[3] The book – and perhaps by extension, Ballard himself – also interpret theory-fiction in another way. “We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind”, says Ballard.[4] Our thoughts and perceptions are always-already pervaded by the fictional “mode”, including any “theory” we might derive from or within it. Given this, the role of effective writing is to “invent the reality.”[5] Hence the shift from Ballard’s earliest fictions – the ones that fabulate an extraordinary natural event (The Drowned World, The Crystal World, et al) – to the immediate (or im-mediate) traumas of unnatural (sub)urban life (Crash, High-Rise).

Sellars’s book reads as an account of trying to “invent the reality” of its writer’s psychic life in the most authentic conceivable manner – as a “memoir from a parallel universe”. But it succeeds as theory-fiction in a third sense, not directly related to the two outlined above. The novel’s (?) parallel narrator begins by attempting to render Ballard as a latent philosopher, who uses the shell of fiction in order to disseminate deep-seated “truths” about the real world (Def. 1). Yet – and it’s no spoiler to reveal this, all fiction requires dramatic tension after all – this task does not play out as the narrator expects. The planned exercise quickly becomes a living-out of Ballard’s “extreme metaphors”, an experiencing and intensifying of psychic traumas across the fault lines of the narrator’s entire life. “Why did I always shove aside the positive implications of Ballard’s work, the message of resistance it carried, in favour of the dark desires that had driven his characters to reach that point? I suppose it reflected my own cynical worldview, my own fatal inwardness that ensured I found little joy in anything.”[6] Ballard’s own moralistic framework guaranteed that he himself, when faced with a precarious juncture, would always take the blue pill: “Dangerous bends ahead. Slow down.” Sellars’s doppelganger, without the framework, the grounding of thought and desire, is free to take the path to psychosis. “Dangerous bends ahead. Speed up.”[7]

It is this exposure of a lack of grounding in the narrator’s interpretation of his deep assignment that,  perversely, re-inverts Applied Ballardianism into a cautionary tale. In every interview, Sellars is adamant: “It’s a mistake to read a political agenda into Ballard – or Applied Ballardianism. I don’t advise it.”[8] But the book, and it’s author’s message, Negarestani shows, are hardly apolitical; instead, their engagements with politics demonstrate a

playing precisely [of] the multi-level game with different political resolutions at different levels. […] Depending on the resolution at which the game is played, the book is replete with fundamentally different sociopolitical visions of our world. There is no contradiction here, only competing actual worlds which – and perhaps it is simply a bad habit – we are accustomed to calling the world. It is the conflict between world versions and their respective visions that is, in fact, the very constitutive element of what we name ‘reality’.[9]

Sellars has characterised the book as an exercise in failure, failure of the very idea of applying Ballardianism – at least in the sense his narrator attempts, as an ideal for living. As his life becomes mediatized by the very media warning him against its dangers, the narrator’s journey amounts to an exploration of inner space in the term’s most restricted sense: as a solipsism, or phenomenology. Now the character sees orbs in the sky, ghosts on airfields, Ballardian ley lines, everywhere. Cast adrift from the media Events central to Ballard’s texts, the narrator’s theory-fiction has folded back in on itself, as conspiracy theory. It’s no wonder that he briefly turns to the Mandela Effect as a potential re-grounding agent, for unifying his cognitively dissonant memories.

To recapitulate, we see Applied Ballardianism as theory-fiction in a threefold sense. Firstly, it is a theoretical exploration of the ideas of Ballard’s fiction, conveyed in the “truly authentic” form of (quasi-)Ballardian fiction. Secondly, it is an extension and  critique of these Ballardian concepts (his original theory-fiction): specifically, of the traumas brought about by the ungrounding and deterritorializing effects of immersion within the media landscape. Thirdly, and finally, it is an expression of the traumatic effects of Ballard’s theory-fiction on the individual, and a warning against untethered free-falls through inner space. I believe that Sellars is saying, in effect, that dissociation must bottom out somewhere. The ground awaits any such schizoid free-fall, and this ground may resemble any number of things: conspiracist paranoia, hard concrete, hikikomori, windshield glass… Yet, I don’t see all theory-fiction as bad religion. If we can keep our grounding in sight, we might be able to foresee and avoid what lurks behind the cracks in reality, and at the same time, produce the condition for original thought and expression.

Notes

[1] Simon Sellars & Robin Mackay, “So Many Unrealities”, Urbanomic (10th December 2018), available online at https://www.urbanomic.com/document/so-many-unrealities/.

[2] Mark Fisher, Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (New York: Exmilitary Press, 2018 [1999]), pp. 84-96.

[3] J.G. Ballard, from the 1995 introduction to Crash. Cf. Sellars & Mackay. The quote appears in Applied Ballardianism: Memoir From a Parallel Universe (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2018), pp. 39-40.

[4] Ballard, introduction to Crash.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Applied Ballardianism, p. 239.

[7] Ibid, p. 223.

[8] Sellars, “Simon Sellars on Applied Ballardianism”, interviewed by Tadas Vinokur for Aleatory Books (17th December 2018), available online at https://www.aleatorybooks.com/simonsellarsinterview.

[9] Reza Negarestani, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (Reading Applied Ballardianism)”, Toy Philosophy (9th August 2018), available online at https://toyphilosophy.com/2018/08/09/mene-mene-tekel-upharsin-reading-applied-ballardianism/.

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[maxksx]