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  • Writer's pictureBen Samuel

Experimental text collages by JG Ballard

Four Text Collages (Project for a New Novel), by J. G. Ballard. Experimental text collages by Ballard intended as a condensed novel. Originally Ballard planned to display the work on billboards, as if they were a public advertisement.




"(These are) a series of four facing-page spreads that were specimen pages I put together in the late 50s... sample pages of a new kind of novel, entirely consisting of magazine-style headlines and layouts, with a deliberately meaningless text, the idea being that the imaginative content could be carried by the headlines and overall design, so making obsolete the need for a traditional text except for virtually decorative purposes... The pages from the Project For A New Novel were made at a time when I was working on a chemical society journal in London, and the lettering was taken from the US magazine Chemical and Engineering News -- I liked the stylish typography. I also like the scientific content, and used stories from Chem. Eng. News to provide the text of my novel. Curiously enough, far from being meaningless, the science news stories somehow become fictionalized by the headings around them." - J.G Ballard





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