In 1975 the Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader set sail from Cape Cod on a single-handed crossing of the Atlantic as part of what would be his final work, entitled In Search of the Miraculous. His vessel, the thirteen foot long Ocean Wave, was the smallest craft in which such a feat had been attempted. Three weeks into the voyage radio contact was lost, and ten weeks later the Ocean Wave was found partially submerged West-Southwest of the coast of Ireland, Ader’s intended destination. He, however, was never seen again.

What he left behind is decidedly slim: a few short films, photographs, and performance pieces comprise his entire body of work. Emerging from this fragmentary, almost incidental material is the picture of a man struggling with elemental forces in his life, using physical means to attempt to express the invisible weight of his emotions and past. Born in 1942 during the German occupation of the Netherlands, Ader’s parents turned their home into a safe house for Dutch Jews, hoping to hide them from the Nazis until the war was over. Unfortunately, the safe house was discovered and his father was summarily arrested, briefly imprisoned, and executed in the woods outside their home. Given only fifteen minutes to gather the family belongings and leave the country, his mother threw all their clothing out into the garden, hoping to come back for it later. When told that his father would never come back, Ader pleaded with his mother, “Mama, please don’t leave me”.

Echoes of these events ripple through all of his work: in his best-known film, I’m too sad to tell you, Ader weeps uncontrollably into the camera for a full ten minutes. In a subsequent performance piece he scrawls ‘Please don’t leave me’ on the gallery wall, and in All My Clothes he strews his clothing on the roof of his house, the same roof that he later films himself toppling off in Fall I. It can be tempting to see all of this from a reductionist standpoint: the events that shape a personality in the beginning will determine its direction through the course of life. Ader definitely struggled with what might be termed the inevitable– death, loss, and even gravity; the forces that pull us down. However, his explorations into this territory are tinged with humor as well as a deep understanding that the only way to rise above these elements is sometimes to surrender to them.

Perhaps this is the reason he decided to make the Atlantic crossing, to pursue something beyond the weight of the past, beyond his own frailty. Some have suggested that he went only in search of death, though I doubt that to be true. He seemed to have an innate understanding of the specific weight of time and emotions, the physical objects surrounding them, and the invisible forces that act in tandem: a grand concert of events in which we are small, if integral points. In search of the miraculous he was overcome, and in that overcoming he created his own persona, which if not based purely on truth is anchored in what he understood best: myth.

Here, then, is a mix for Bas Jan Ader at the beginning of autumn, a season of remembering.

Click here to play it all:

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1. Valgeir Sigurdsson – Dreamland
2. Mister 1-2-3-4 – Jef
3. Emeralds – Now You See Me
4. Gravenhurst – The Diver
5. Colin Newman – Alone On Piano
6. Clogs – Last Song
7. Max Richter – Infra 5
8. Julianna Barwick – Bode
9. Doveman – The Best Thing
10. Big Star – Holocaust
11. Tim Hecker – Chimeras
12. Tindersticks – Until the Morning Comes
13. The Durutti Column – Darkness Here
14. Antony & The Johnsons – Thank You for Your Love