Untitled (Tea Party)

Bas Jan Ader's first fall film shows him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-storey house in the Inland Empire.

Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.

This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.

Bas Jan Ader hangs from the branch of a tall tree, until he loses his grip and falls into a river below.

One of a series of ‘falls’ by Bas Jan Ader that he recorded on film, this work was filmed in West Kapelle, Holland in 1970.

Shot in his garage-studio, the camera records Ader painstakingly hoisting a large brick over his shoulder. His figure is harshly lit by two tangles of light bulbs. He drops the brick, crushing one strand of lights. He again lifts the brick, allowing tension to accrue. The climax inevitable—the brick falls and crushes the second set of lights. Here the film abruptly ends, all illumination extinguished.

More than 40 years ago, Bas Jan Ader decided to go on an adventure. In a tiny sailing boat, the Dutchman set sail across the ocean. Nine months later the boat was found adrift at sea. There was no sign of Ader. It’s a story that has always fascinated filmmaker Martijn Blekendaal, not just because of the disappearance itself, but also because of the entire mystery that surrounds it. Blekendaal embarks on an investigation that follows his footsteps to Hollywood. It turns out that, in order to understand what drove this man to his fateful voyage, the filmmaker has to overcome his fear of looking beyond his own horizon. In a whirlwind montage of images jumping from one time, place and person to another, Blekendaal shows us that Bas Jan left behind something more special than just a mystery.

Jemison adopts and refashions the premise of Bas Jan Ader’s work of the same name. As in the 1970s-era video, a young man clings to a tree branch for a long minute before ultimately falling out of the frame. Jemison’s remake honors the original’s investment in what she calls “the tension between labor, play, and the laws of physics,” but in her hands that material takes up “the complex demands of the performance of masculinity for Black men.”