Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film (74/83), 2006/2021

Archival Print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315gsm
17 × 23 cm (6 ¾ × 9 inches)
34 × 39 cm (13 ⅜ × 15 ⅜ inches) (framed)

‘Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film’ was a film originally uploaded by David Horvitz anonymously to Youtube in 2006. The description stated that the film was recently rediscovered at the University of California Irvine, where Ader had a teaching position. After being viewed thousands of times, the film was removed by Youtube after a complaint filed by Patrick Painter Gallery, the gallery who at the time represented Ader’s estate and who also at the same time was being criticized for releasing posthumous editions of questionable origins, all stamped with the authenticity of the estate.

83 photographs have been printed from the original super 8 film, each photograph corresponding to a single frame of the film’s four-second entirety.

Disseminated into another format as multiple photographs, the work ‘Newly Found Bas Jan Ader Film’ expands and grows despite its fake authenticity. In a time where public information proliferates instantly and globally without being filtered for truth, the effects leave lasting imprints, shaping collective consciousness. Horvitz has previously experimented with the notion of art as viral matter, with the potential to encounter unexpected audiences and create fictional interventions in reality.

The work exists as one edition of all 83 photographs as a set, as well as each individual photograph as a single edition.