RHIAN SASSEEN

Empty air. And then -

Half-awake. I am trying not to fall asleep. I am trying not to drift away. I am trying not to fall asleep. I do not want to dream.

Late nights. Though I do not want to sleep, I wish that I could fall. Instead of falling I am watching: Youtube flickers out across my screen, a link and then another link, and this is a different sort of descent. I love the sidebar; I love the element of chance, the die roll that accompanies every blue-lit sentence. Lying in my bed alone at night I put off sleep, push off dream: I want to read, and watch, and learn.

The Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader is dead. He died at sea; a victim of the wind. Of water. There is a kind of purity to his videos, his art: his falling. Empty air, and then the space is filled.

Breaking.

In his most famous series, he films himself falling. From his roof, from his bike, from a tree – there is no resistance, no rethinking. The pretense of control is discarded, and instead the inevitability of gravity takes hold. All ego vanishes. Sometimes, a body is simply that: a body.

To fall – metaphorically, literally – is to force oneself to enter a moment of vulnerability.

Nighttime. I wish that I could fall.