In search of the miraculous (¿Por qué no es posible hablar de Bas Jan Ader después del fracaso?)
Adrián Porcel, 2024.
Performative lecture, approx. 20 min. PowerPoint presentation, photographs, and videos. Table, chair, desk lamp, notebook, and shoe stencils. Variable dimensions.
Excerpt:
Cranes, like weather vanes or lighthouse beams, have always maintained the essential function of signaling the imminent, of hinting at what is near. If the wind lashes the weather vane and it turns, we would be forced to exhale in the direction it sets. Lighthouses terrify me. [Long pause. Turn to the audience] they show the immovable, and there is something more [Return to seat. Point the desk lamp back at the notebook].
Photographs of the installation and performance.
The project is based on the extraction of two fundamental notions present in Bas Jan Ader’s artistic trajectory, focusing on In Search of the Miraculous (1975). On one hand, it addresses his romantic approach to action, which directly engages with the logics of the sublime; on the other, it considers his relationship with the concept of failure and the notion of imbalance. From these premises, a dialogue is proposed that seeks to unravel certain parallels between the artist’s work and the quote attributed to Fredric Jameson: “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”. The research takes form through a performative lecture that delves into this search for the miraculous. It invites contemplation and reflection on the instability of the system through the use of opaque materials that generate a multiplicity of tiny changes. This exercise highlights the disconnection between the bodies inhabiting collapse and the incoherencies emerging from this decline—conditions that make it possible to imagine the end of the world precisely because of its visibility.
The central quote that structures the piece is taken from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004) by Jared Diamond. It describes how gradual changes that lead a society to increasingly adverse conditions are almost imperceptible, except through their accumulation over time. This quote is repeatedly activated during the performance, but each time in an altered form. The intention is to induce a hallucinatory drift that demands a redefinition of the object of study—an attempt to approach the dematerialized and unknowable, perceptible only in the course of the search. At the same time, this engagement with the quote highlights the inherent difficulty of knowledge: the comprehension of the text, the structures that support it, and the horror of discovering that these may ultimately be incomprehensible.
References to falling and vanishing constitute a recurring motif. Drawing from texts in Species of Spaces (1974) by Georges Perec, the logical disappearance of the everyday through overexposure is presented, leading the performer to materialize elements such as the stencils projected during the lecture. Likewise, The Wretched of the Screen (2014) by Hito Steyerl provides a framework to articulate the idea of “free fall” as a metaphor for systemic collapse, emphasizing the imbalance experienced by the artist when reading quotes at the edge of the table. The presence of the spotlight refers to encounter through action: a support that not only locates and contextualizes the figures it illuminates, but also interrogates them. When it falls during the lecture, it becomes evident that the question remains unanswered, that the search has not found the miracle. The conclusion, marked by the disappearance of the body leaving the scene, evokes the impossibility of encompassing the ungraspable, the final failure to confront the condition of capitalism, and ultimately, to imagine its end.
With the collaboration and photographs by: Rosa García