Terminal Futures: JG Ballard in the 21st Century

2026 is an apt time to celebrate the work of the writer and essayist JG Ballard as it sees 50 years since the publication of one of his seminal novels High Rise (1975) as well as 20 years since his final novel Kingdom Come (2006) (a novel whose dystopian setting, a shopping centre, was based on Kingston-Upon-Thames own Bentall Centre).

Ballard, of course is indelibly associated with Kingston and its surrounding areas having lived for 50 years in nearby Shepperton - with Kingston's Bentall Centre used as the model for The "Metro-Centre" in Kingdom Come. This interdisciplinary conference, organised through (and with thanks to) the Visual Cultures Research Centre, Kingston School of Art, will take place over the weekend of 15th of May 2026 and invites researchers and creative practitioners who are engaged with Ballard’s work and legacy; its seeks to excavate Ballard’s association with Kingston and its surrounding (Psycho)geographies (Heathrow, the M25, the Westway Shepperton and its studios, Brooklands racetrack etc) and architectures; to discuss Ballard’s work in all its forms (novels, short stories, essays, journalism and more) and his legacy across a diverse range of the arts and media cultures.

The conference will aim to consider Ballard’s legacy in the 21 century especially in the creative arts and in architecture, through contemporary 21st century research. To that end it will take place in Kingston University’s very own Ballardian “High Rise” – our RIBA and Mies Van der Rohe award winning Town House building. It not only invites papers of 15-20 minutes but also the work of creative practitioners (artists, writers, filmmakers) whose own work engages with and exhibits Ballard’s legacy

Conference organisers: Dr Matt Melia ([email protected]) and Dr Chris Horrocks ([email protected])

Conference Programme

This is a provisional programme and times/speakers /running order might change

We are currently confirming keynotes

J.G Ballard Conference Programme

Friday, May 15

Registration

9:00–10:00

Welcome

10:00–10:15 – Welcoming remarks and notices

Keynote + Q&A

10:15–11:00

Tea / Coffee

11:00–11:15

Panel 1: Ballard, Film and Image

11:15–12:15

• Ed Platt – From Shanghai to Shepperton: Wartime Childhoods in the Work of J.G. Ballard and John Boorman

• Annalisa Sonzogni – Echoes of Absence: Ballard and the Photographic Afterlife of Abandoned Architecture

• Laurence Kent – Zapruder Frame 235: J.G. Ballard’s Media Theory of Political Violence

Lunch

12:15–13:30

Panel 2: Cars, Concrete and Crash

13:30–14:30

• Paul March-RussellRussell – After the Crash: Subalternity and Agency in Concrete Island

• Louise BouvetZ Zieleskiewicz – A Phenomenology of the Event: Aesthetic Shock and Embodied Perception in Crash by Ballard and Cronenberg

• Mik Tampold – “Is the Rectum an Automobile Accident?” Bersani and ObjectOriented Ontology in J.G. Ballard’s Crash

Tea / Coffee

14:30–14:45

Panel 3: The Built Environment

14.45-15.45

• Marcin Tereszewski – Theme Parks of Control: J.G. Ballard, Disneyland, and the Utopian Logic of Late Capitalism

• Teyé Lee – From vertical space to vertical attention (Rereading High Rise through platform capitalism)

• Simon Barker – Always Crashing (15-minute film, dir. Simon Barker and Jason Wood)

Tea / Coffee

15:45–16:00

Panel 4: Surrealism and (Post)Modernity

16:00–17:00

• Carolyn Lau – Becoming Landscape: A Posthuman Reading of J.G. Ballard’s “Free, Fantastic Literature”

• James Reath – Weather Modification Inc.

End of Day 1

Saturday, May 16

Keynote + Q&A

10:15–11:00

Tea / Coffee

11:00–11:15

Panel 1: Ballard and Home – Shepperton and the Suburbs

11.15-12-15

• Stephen Barber – A Journey into J.G. Ballard’s House, 2019

• Chris Horrocks – Ballard’s Garden Sculpture

• Matt Melia – Bowie, Ballard and the Suburban Experiment

Lunch

12:15–13:30

Panel 2: Environment and Catastrophe – Ballard’s Ecotopias

13:30–14:30

• Zlatan Filipovic – The Unsettling Kinship: J.G. Ballard and the New Climate Imaginary

• Piotr Bockowski – Biogenetic Recapitulation in Ballardian Visions of Environmental Disasters

• Maz Jardon – Turbid Epistemology in The Wind from Nowhere

Tea / Coffee

14:30–14:45

Panel 3: Kingdom Come, Fascism and Consumerism

14.45-15.45

• Mark Blacklock – “Fascism? Hard word to get out, isn’t it?” Ballard on Fascism, from “Alphabets of Unreason” to Kingdom Come

• Amy May Fischli – The Soft Fascism of Consumerism

• Lezley George – Suburban Consumption and Dystopian Fashion Geographies

Tea / Coffee

15.45-16.00

Panel 4: Creatively Interpreting Ballard

16:00–17:00

• Mike Bonsall – Digital Interpretations of High RRise

• James Blake – Richard Prince’s Borrowings from J.G. Ballard: The Anatomy of Appropriation

End of Day 2

Sunday, May 17th

Panel: Ballardian Psychogeography

10:15–11:15

• George Reid – Terminal Ambience: Brutalist YouTube Audiovisuals and Ballardian Psychogeographies

• Nick Fergusson – A Walk Around Heathrow Airport

• Matt Smith – Everyday Architecture / Psychogeography (15-minute Film)

Optional Closing Remarks

Following the final panel, attendees are invited to travel together to Shepperton (accessible by bus or train) to visit Ballard’s house and the surrounding area, followed by Sunday lunch at The Bell Inn, Old Charlton Rd, Shepperton.

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Host or Publisher Dr Matt Melia and Professor Stephen Barber, Kingston University