SOCKS

An online magazine of Art, Architecture, Media, Culture, Sounds, Territories, Technology)

  • Media
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Culture
  • Sounds
  • Territories
  • Visual Atlas

“Insert some random JG Ballard quote here”

August 24, 2010 by Fosco Lucarelli Leave a Comment

As you may already know, the WTF news of the week is the traffic jam in China’s Heibei Province, which has been going on for about ten days now and may last a month.

Tom Vanderbuilt, author of “Traffic”, makes a parallel to the Godard’s black comedy movie “Weekend“, inspired by a Cortazar novel, in which an epic traffic jam gradually turns into a depiction of the collapse of today’s (or, better say: 60’s) consumer society. You can read the whole Cortazar short novel (La autopista del Sur) in Spanish.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ScGLdfqdYo

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdwqOf7jB4w

Vanderbuilt also makes an interesting list of his favourite films about traffic jams, which includes a Tati and a Murnau movie, along with Rain Man and Midnight Cowboy.

In the Chinese case, we hear typical stories: One truck driver complained that vendors were selling instant noodles for “four times the original price while I wait in the congestion”, which remind me of Lagos in Nigeria and the explosion of urban life around jammed motorways.

Rem Koolhaas recently published some documents and a documentary on the african city, an excerpt of which you can already see on YouTube.

Via: Kottke.

Related Posts

  • Random magazine: the book!

    New-media art Random magazine quits, but it is still online. Ten years of publications have…

  • Zones Devoid of Time: Ballard's Penguin Covers, by David Pelham

    David Pelham was an English artist and graphic designer who came to meet author J.…

  • Dr. Pierre Pâte Dentifrice

    Mural in France, (Versailles?) from the 1920's overgrown over time. (Photographed by Deidi Von Schaewen)…

  • Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu

    The chilling 1983 manga "Domu, a child's dream" , by Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira's fame,…

  • XVII Century Processions

    From Christie's: THE PROCESSION OF THE GUILDS AND THE PROCESSION OF NOTRE-DAME DU SABLON DURING…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr

Socks is a non-linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.

About | Visual Atlas | Topics

We are Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli from Microcities. Ask us anything

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr


SOCKS is a project by Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi of MICROCITIES, Architecture Cityscape, Landscape.
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Whenever possible we try to attribute content (images, videos, and quotes) to their creators and original sources. Please feel free to write us if you notice misattributions or wish something to be removed.
SOCKS is powered by WordPress.