Bas Jan Ader
Fall 1, Los Angeles (1970)
Fall 2, Amsterdam (1970)
Broken fall (organic), Amsterdamse Bos, Holland (1971)
Broken fall (geometric), Westkapelle, Holland (1971)
Nightfall (1971)
Watch Online now through Sunday, July 12, at Midnight Eastern Time
Metro Pictures is presenting a different artist’s film or series of shorts each weekend to stream online from Friday at noon until Sunday at midnight (Eastern Time).
This weekend we are presenting Bas Jan Ader’s falling films. Ader was born in 1942 in Winschoten, Netherlands. In 1963 he moved to Los Angeles where he was associated with a group of artists whose work would define an important strain of conceptual art distinct to the West Coast. In California he produced a small but extraordinarily affecting body of artworks prior to 1975, when he disappeared at sea while sailing the Atlantic alone as the second part of his trilogy In Search of the Miraculous. Merging a conceptual framework with slapstick humor, his themes of falling, failing, gravity, and doom explore philosophical concerns like the notion of free will.
