Photo: K. van Gelder

DAVID HORVITZ, Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film, 2009
13 x 13 cm
DVD, plastic sleeve, photo copied cover
hand written title by the artist on disc, as issued
edition 30
published by Art Metropole, Toronto, Canada
mint condition
extremely rare
inv.DHor 690

‘In 2006 the clip Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film appeared on YouTube. The six second clip features a man bicycling into the sea. It is announced as a work by Bas Jan Ader found at UC Irvine, where Ader was teaching in the 1970s. The story is not unlikely. Bas Jan Ader, who was lost at sea in 1975 while undertaking an Atlantic crossing that was to be the second work in a series he entitled In Search of the Miraculous, left a small body of highly noticeable works, mostly short films and photographs. One of these works, Fall II, Amsterdam from 1970, is a short sequence showing Ader biking along and then into a canal. The newly found work could be a related iteration. As many of Bas Jan Ader’s works show, he was interested in inserting his own body into a relationship with gravity, investigating phases of transition, the time and space between two locatable states, from standing up to falling down, from hanging from a tree to hitting the surface of the pond below.

It was revealed that Horvitz was in fact the author of this newly found work. Assumingly on request from the gallery Patrick Painter who represents Bas Jan Ader’s estate, Youtube removed the clip for ‘copyright infringement,’ only for it to reappear soon again posted on an account carrying the name of PatrickPainterGaller – most likely Horvitz’s work. Currently you can find the clip as the first video appearing when googling ‘Bas Jan Ader,’ and also on the official Bas Jan Ader website under the section Homages. However tricksterish Horvitz’s effort may appear, it does also expose a great admiration of Ader’s work and kinship to the ideas he brought forth. Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film was not produced to be shown in a gallery space. It was rather a device that, circulating on the internet, triggered certain mechanisms and revealed how a number of parties reacted to the potential existence of a never before seen Bas Jan Ader work. Horvitz reveals how it is possible to insert new information into already existing narratives and shift their immediate appearance. A work by David Horvitz is today a very visible part of a Google search for ‘Bas Jan Ader’. It is fair to say that he faked his way into this hierarchy of information, but the fact that he succeeded so well is worth our attention. It points to our unfounded reliance on whatever a Google search brings us, and comments on the potentialities of the fake as well as questions our relationship to the real.’ From “But Mr. Horvitz, Where Is The Work?”.
Helga Christoffersen, 2010

Ref.
Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film

Additional information
In 2009 the 2nd Cannons Gallery published a flip book called “Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film” which comprises stills from the film. The book is accompanied with a free 2-sided newsprint David Horvitz produced for his exhibition at the gallery.