Mapping The Drowned World

Abstract

Climate-change is the new Cold War. Like the omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation, climate-change looms in the background, a constant insidious threat: imminent and inexorable, yet ill defined. Written in 1962, during the perpetual slow-burning crisis of the Cold War, J.G. Ballard’s novel The Drowned World reads like an uncanny premonition of the key crisis of our current age: climate-change. As a bridge between the post-war apocalyptic fears of the recent past and current eschatological anxieties, this allegorical work of fiction is a rich source of information. Mapping The Drowned World is driven by the research question: what can we learn about our world by re-reading, re-writing and re-interpreting The Drowned World through the lens of art? This three-pronged methodology has generated three suites of artworks: a series of maps, and two major installations in the form of ruined scale-model cities. In addition, a group exhibition which featured some of these works, alongside works made by five other Australian artists, was staged and documented in a catalogue, also titled Mapping The Drowned World. The written content of this research includes several new analyses of The Drowned World, critiques of the artworks made as part of this project and works made by other artists, and an original interstitial chapter for the novel which recuperates the only female character in The Drowned World. Together, both the creative and written components of this research contribute new knowledge to three fields: scholarship on J.G. Ballard, including contemporary artworks made in direct response to his stories; the field of critical cartography, both textual and visual; and works which respond to eschatological anxiety.