“Sex is now a conceptual act, it's probably only in terms of the perversions that we can make contact with each other at all.”
J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition 1970
Originally made for BBC 2’s Review arts strand in 1971 and directed by Harley Cokliss, the piece was actually based on a section from Ballard’s experimental montage novel, The Atrocity Exhibition, which the writer would later develop into Crash (as filmed by David Cronenberg).
“In 1970, when a senior executive at Ballard’s American publishing house finally got around to reading a finished copy of The Atrocity Exhibition, he was so horrified that he ordered all copies to be pulped. In the UK, the reader’s report for Ballard’s 1972 novel Crash famously said: “This writer is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish.”
A sharp and provocative visionary
The Irish Times - Saturday, December 22, 2012