Sunday newspaper reading (another good source of inspiration): J.G. Ballard writing on Salvador Dali. I disagree fundamentally with some assertions here, and it's rather slight for a Ballard piece... There's too much groundbreaking work from the Surrealists and Max Ernst to single out just Dali. Their work suffuses every visual medium known to us; often times while watching ads aimed at kids' food products I'm amazed by how surreal the food itself has become, getting up and talking to the kids or primary colored tacos and what have you. I've also got, for all his absurdity, some issues with Dali's support for Franco. But I've also never gotten over my first glimpse of Un Chien Andalou. I think when you look at work like this you really have to put yourself in the frame of mind of people in 1929, where it must've seemed like a caterwauling psychic wail. Here's an interesting interview with Ballard here about his most recent book. The most shocking thing I read there is that something happened in England called The Ikea Riots. Which my head is still spinning over. Ballard seemed to define in his work in the 60s a strange sort of science fiction that predicted our future behavior - ecological disaster, urbanization, psychotic behavior in suburbia, and such things as absurd as Ikea riots. Don DeLillo said the future belongs to crowds. I believe it belongs to people lining up weeks in advance for Xmas sales and new videogame consoles and the release of blockbuster movies. Overconsumption has no better, uglier visual icon.



And here's some Pixies doing Debaser, the song that made me aware that this film even existed.