While popularly known as a writer of science fiction, the late J. G. Ballard was a veritable philosopher of contemporary culture, whose keen observations both delineated and anticipated vast, rapid shifts in postwar technology and media—the likes of which, his stories implied, were forever altering the shape of our global environment and of the subjectivities populating it. Artforum asked editor Robert Weil, film director David Cronenberg, artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and poet Clark Coolidge to reflect on this legendary figure’s legacy in the fields of literature, cinema, and art.
