THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

In 1975 Bas Jan Ader set sail from Cape Cod hoping, among other things, to break the world record for the smallest one-man transatlantic crossing.  The trip, modelled after the man versus nature type pilgrimage most often found in boys’ magazines, was aptly entitled In Search of the Miraculous.  Equipped with a camera and tape recorder, Ader planned to document his survival at sea as the completion of a three part project.  Months after his departure a Spanish trawler found the wreckage of his boat about 150 miles west of the coast of Ireland.  Somewhere between the glimmer of Hemingway and Dylan Thomas, Bas Jan Ader disappeared.

Anon/Frieze, 1994