Friday 24 July 2009


David Horvitz has a show at 2nd Cannon Publications in LA - centered on a video titled Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film.
In 2007 a video of a few second black and white film was uploaded to Youtube with the title, "Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film." The black and white film depicted a figure biking into the ocean. The posting claimed that the film was found in Ader's locker at UC Irvine after his disappearance at sea in 1975, and that the film was assumed unusable because it abruptly runs out just as the figure enters the water. Responding to a complaint by a thirdparty, Youtube deleted the posted video, saying that "this material is infringing."
The best part is that the video was presumably pulled because Horvitz's post claimed association with (and therefore the blessings of) Patrick Painter Gallery, which represents Ader's estate. A bold inclusion that supported the film's claims of authenticity.
Horvitz's 5+ second film is a grainy, cutting-room-floor clip of a lanky figure on a bicycle pedaling into the surf, instantly succumbing to the difficulty of aqua-dynamics. It's long enough to see that the effort is futile, but short enough to leave the viewer wanting to see how far he gets.



The video's text:
A newly rediscovered film by artist, Bas Jan Ader. This was found at UC Irvine where he was teaching. It is believed this work was disregarded by the artist because the film runs out just as he enters the ocean. A new official limited edition of this piece will be available soon.

So the very question of 'authenticity' is a huge facet of Ader's work - i.e. authenticity of visual signifiers (emotion) - in this case, questions are raised about all the posthumous editioning of work previously unreleased. Most of Patrick Painter's BJA offerings carry the suspicious '/' - like, "EDITION OF 3 (1973/2005)". It's kind of a shame, the posthumously-editioned works seem to echo BJA's contemporaries' work - neons or repetitive-action films (Naumann and McCarthy) - and really just seem like filler next to his seminal film works and installations that are so seductive.

I say that like they're not still awesome.

2nd Cannon website - Thanks Bert!

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