1. Julia Fullerton-Batten: Deep Quiet Just recently I ran across the adjective “Ballardian”, which means: “…resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.” This image, from a collection of photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten projects this Ballardian vibe in a way that is both subtle and intense. The desolate concrete planes scattered with empty cars, fading to an mass of industrial shapes and arc lights, viewed from within one of those hermetically sealed office tower windows conveys perfectly the inhospitable landscape of the modern city, and much of modern popular culture. Yet reflected in the window we see the blurry figure of a beautiful woman, hinting that there is more than this. In a sense, then this picture conveys both the desolate vision of J.G. Ballard, and at the same time the redemptive Gnosis of Philip K. Dick, who writes in “The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation”: Each of us has a divine counterpart unfallen who can reach a hand down to us to awaken us. This other personality is the authentic waking self; the one we have now is asleep and minor. We are in fact asleep, and in the hands of a dangerous magician disguised as a good god, the deranged creator deity. The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that it is a deterministic prison controlled by the demented creator causes us willingly to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly fall asleep in delusion.

    Julia Fullerton-Batten: Deep Quiet

    Just recently I ran across the adjective “Ballardian”, which means:

    “…resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.”

    This image, from a collection of photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten projects this Ballardian vibe in a way that is both subtle and intense. The desolate concrete planes scattered with empty cars, fading to an mass of industrial shapes and arc lights, viewed from within one of those hermetically sealed office tower windows conveys perfectly the inhospitable landscape of the modern city, and much of modern popular culture. Yet reflected in the window we see the blurry figure of a beautiful woman, hinting that there is more than this.

    In a sense, then this picture conveys both the desolate vision of J.G. Ballard, and at the same time the redemptive Gnosis of Philip K. Dick, who writes in “The Ten Major Principles of the Gnostic Revelation”:

    Each of us has a divine counterpart unfallen who can reach a hand down to us to awaken us. This other personality is the authentic waking self; the one we have now is asleep and minor. We are in fact asleep, and in the hands of a dangerous magician disguised as a good god, the deranged creator deity. The bleakness, the evil and pain in this world, the fact that it is a deterministic prison controlled by the demented creator causes us willingly to split with the reality principle early in life, and so to speak willingly fall asleep in delusion.