A trip to Ballardland   Intrigued by the disturbing suburban images of the British prose maverick J G Ballard, you have decided to live out his vision, to immerse yourself in the space of his novels. So you have decided to temporarily reverse your preconceptions, venture forth into the unknown, and enjoy the ride. Picture the parking fields sparkling in the sun, the majestic traffic loops enveloping the shopping malls like midgardsormen, the snake in Norse mythology who surrounded the world of men. Around; tall white buildings, competing in height, not industries or factories but Olympian monuments. A water tower just beside them, streamlined and funky, looks more like an alien landing ramp than just another part of the city's plumbing system. Your slick new car purrs on the highway, your window is open and you can smell the intoxicating fragrance of newly laid asphalt as you approach the Dream Factory. There, you slide your car into a vacant spot, curiously eyeing the other pilgrims, mostly parents dragging their kids along, bribing them with ice-cream in a funny but necessary ritual of domestication. A thought rushes through your head, "Take off your hat before you go into the church!" and you dismiss it with a smile, your heart warming with sympathy for both children and parents, so oblivious to the comedy and beauty of their game. You approach the big slide door, the portal into the Palace of Desire. A smell of the most overwhelming cleanness slips out as you stand in front of the door, marvelling at the smoothness of its motion. The smell drags you inside, it beckons you to get purified. You are in complete "up-time" as you stroll inside, taking in all the impressions without any intellectual interference; pure meditation. As you snap out of it, you see a bunch of older kids with rollerblades standing around the ice cream stand in the middle of the shopping centre. Your heart fills with yearning for those days of silent conspiracies. They sneer when you smile at them. Kids are kids. You saunter on to one of the shops. Luckily, you didn't bring any money. You haven't planned to buy anything anyway, you're just here for the ride. You engage in conversations with the shop assistants, you help young mothers with their bags, or you watch their kids while they shop. You look at all the stuff and think about what you can buy when you get your next paycheck. You play some obscure arcade games and buy an ice cream (for the change that you happen to have in your pocket.) And then evening approaches, gently and slowly. The stream of customers reverses, and then disappears. You are the last one out. At eight o'clock, it is still quite light outside - at least in this northern country - so you take out your camera. Yes. The place is even more beautiful when there are no people there, much more beautiful, in fact. You spend quite some time around the parking lot, and then move on to the factories, shooting some beautiful stills, but soon it is dark and you must retreat. You step into the car again, and realize that you need a soft landing from this Ballardland trip, so you head for a gas station and drink a cup of coffee there, absent-mindedly leafing through the magazines. This is a time to digest what has happened today, synthesize, or just forget. Don't torture yourself with ashen thoughts of the grim consumer society, the heartless capitalist currents that you fear threaten to sweep away all that used to be human until five minutes ago. You become what you oppose, you know, so today, become it in a different way, immerse yourself in Ballardland, log in to that transcendental feeling of (sub)urban ecstasy - just for a day. Then you can go back to your Marxist critiques of the fragmented post modern society again. In order to understand what you are up against, you must infiltrate it and dig up its very heart, its techniques of seduction. Me? I'm going down to the mall today to rent some movies. by Mikael Huss copyright (c) 1997