Page 41 - Studio International - October 1970

2

r Eduardo Paolozzi (left), J. G. Ballard and Apollo
Space Suit in the Science Museum, Kensington.
2 Beams 1949, bronze
Private collection. Photo: David Farrell
3 `... early sculpture where he was using the
technique appropriate at the time of overlaying
reality, the world of nuts and bolts technology, with
his own fantasies ... '
Large Frog 1958, bronze
Coll : David E. Bright, Los Angeles.
Photo: David Farrell

reality. And somehow the two worlds don't that sex played in the '5os and '6os. There's of American automobile styling, around the
touch. Would you therefore think your role to what I call in my book, The Atrocity Exhibition, middle '5os. Huge flared tail-fins and a
be to take something of significance from out `the death of effect', 'the death of feeling', that maximum of iconographic display. And I had
there and to put 11 in a context in which 11 can one's more and more alienated from any kind of an opening party at the gallery. I'd never seen
be appreciated with that kind of mental set ? direct response to experience. And the car too people get drunk so quickly. Now this had
PAOLOZZI : Well, that may be too simple. If you crash is probably the only act of violence most something to do with the cars on display. I also
look at the series of etchings, the Olivetti of us in Western Europe are ever going to be had a topless girl interviewing people on closed-
project, the basic image remains to all intents involved with, is probably the most dramatic circuit TV so that people could see themselves
and purposes unchanged. But the very fact of event in our lives apart from our own deaths, being interviewed around the crashed cars by
presenting 11 as an etching means that you have and in many cases the two are going to coincide. this topless girl. This was clearly too much. I
to look at this image in a much more serious way Although our central nervous systems have was the only sober person there. Wine was
than you would if you just found 11 in the pages been handed to us on a plate by millions of years poured over the crashed cars, glasses were
of Time or Newsweek. But 11 has to be a of evolution, have been trained to respond to broken, the topless girl was nearly raped in the
particular image; one chooses one from three violence at the level of finger-tip and nerve- back seat of the Pontiac by some self-
thousand which one has collected over twenty ending, in fact now our only experience of aggrandizing character. The show went on for
years. That's what I call normal. I try to reject violence is in the head, in terms of our a month. In that time they came up against
the ordinary ways of making the art image. But imagination, the last place where we were massive hostility of every kind. The cars were
just as, possibly, for want of a better parallel, a designed to deal with violence. We have attacked, windows ripped off. Those windows
classical artist might have done 50o drawings absolutely no biological training to deal with that weren't broken already were smashed. One
based on a friend, one's looking at 50o images violence in imaginative terms. And our whole of the cars was upended, another splashed with
involved with a kind of global situation, and inherited expertise for dealing with violence, white paint. Now the whole thing was a
one's choosing an image which acts as a our central nervous systems, our musculature, speculative illustration of a scene in The Atrocity
metaphor for one's particular feeling. But unless our senses, our ability to run fast or to react Exhibition. I had speculated in my book about
one emphasizes and arranges the images into quickly, our reflexes, all that inherited expertise how the people might behave. And in the real
patterns of irony the point will be lost. is never used. We sit passively in cinemas show the guests at the party and the visitors
WHITFORD: Both of you often choose images watching movies like The Wild Bunch where later behaved in pretty much the way I had
which have to do with crashes, violence of all violence is just a style. Just over a year ago I anticipated. It was not so much an exhibition of
kinds, but particularly with car crashes. For put on an exhibition of crashed cars, what I sculpture as almost of experimental psychology,
which particular ideas or feelings does the car called 'new sculpture', at the New Arts Lab. using the medium of the fine-art show. People
crash act as a metaphor ? And I had three cars brought to the gallery. It were unnerved, you see. There was enormous
BALLARD: Well I don't altogether know, and I'm was very easy to mount the show because the hostility....
glad I don't know. I follow my hunches and technology of moving cars around is highly PAOLOZZI: But you didn't predict the acts of
obsessions and I agree with something Eduardo developed. A crashed Mini, an A40 and a agression.
said the other day, that violence is probably Pontiac which had been in a massive front-end BALLARD: That's true. I didn't predict the acts
going to play the same role in the '7os and '8os collision, a Pontiac from that last grand period of agression against the crashed cars. That's the
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