EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition

We have chosen to make a zine for our artbook, which we are planning on riso-printing or screen printing.  We have each gone through the book and decided on a handful of sections which we think have interesting visual or thematic contents which we would like to add to the film.

Each one of these sections will also be a page in our zine.

EXTENDED: 1960S and 70s inspiration

The Atrocity Exhibition was published in 1970, because of this we are trying to achieve a retro look with stock photos and footage from the 60s and earlier. Some of the main themes of the book include automobiles and automobile accidents, cold war paranoia, media saturation, and the main character's increasing mental illness. Many pop-culture and political figures crop up repeatedly throughout the story including Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy & Jackie O.

We have decided to go with a video-collage sort of style, inspired in part by the collages of Robert Rauschenberg and Ray Johnson. This way we can mix up stock imagery and footage with hand drawn or painted animation.

EXTENDED: Statement of Intent

The Atrocity Exhibition, written by J.G Ballard, and first published in 1970, is an experimental novel which deals with a wide array of 20th Century subject matter. Many of the book's themes, including media-saturation, political propaganda, and consumerism, are subjects that we have discussed in COP sessions throughout the last three years, and much of the language used in the book is rich in visual metaphor. Because of this we were drawn to the novel as a starting point for our film and our intention is to mimic the post-modern narrative structure of the story by focusing on the themes and concepts within the story, rather than depicting specific scenes or attempting to tell a single coherent storyline. We intend to take an abstract and experimental approach to the visuals, blending archive imagery and footage with our own animation to build up a layered montage of scenes related to key themes from the book. The themes we have identified, which will be broken up into loose "movements" within the film are:

1. Landscapes/Geometries/AnatomiesAs the main character in the book, Travis, slips slowly into psychosis he begins to mix mathematical or scientific language into his descriptions of his daily activities and the people he interacts with. This is a rich vein of visual metaphor which we would like to tap into.

2. Media Saturation
Travis has an obsession with the pop culture icons of the mid 20th Century, and the increase in consumerism and celebrity culture. Much of Ballard's work touches on the power of advertising and mass media which came about during the mid-20th Century.

3. Automobile Fetish
Parts of The Atrocity Exhibition foreshadow Ballard's most famous book, Crash, in which people feel sexual gratification whilst viewing images of car crashes and car crash victims.


4. Apocalypse/World War III
Travis' psychosis eventually becomes a fixation upon war and disaster, reflecting the paranoia of the Cold War during which the book was written. He begins conducting mass re-enactments of public disasters such as the kennedy assassination, remodelling them through his own personal experience of the events.

The finished article may not necessarily be recognisable as an interpretation of Ballard's text, but considering the abstract, montage writing style of the book it seems appropriate that the messages and content of the film will only be revealed to the viewer as part of a whole contiguous piece.

I am looking forward to working with Brenda again, after last year's success working with Rosie on Noelline's Flood for Applied. Brenda and I have very similar views on politics, philosophy and art - many of which are reflected in The Atrocity Exhibition. On top of this Brenda has a drive to experiment and try new methods and techniques, which is not only in line with the experimental mode of the novel, but will also push me to produce more interesting work.

EXTENDED - The Atrocity Exhibition

Me and Brenda have decided to work on a (probably very loose) adaptation of The Atrocity Exhibition by J. G. Ballard. I have read and enjoyed lots of Ballard's work before but never read this one.

The book is based around a central character who is slipping further and further into psychosis, and the text is broken up into separate segments which can be read in any order. The main character, whose name changes throughout the book, continuously uses mathematical or geographical language to describe human physiology, and vice versa, and the book has a really lovely visual quality to the writing.

We are planning on doing a quite experimental film, with collage, digital cutout and a kind of abstract/ambient soundscape.