Chasing The Dragon
1982, 43 minutes
Produced for the Kitchen, one of the first venues
to champion video art, Chasing The Dragon was in many ways confirmation
of Auder's full fledged status as an artist.
It's title refers to a method of smoking heroin.
It's subject, a self-absorbed video artist with a heroin habit, is largely
autobiographical. Although based upon Auder's circumstances of that
time, Chasing The Dragon is a collaboration with its star, Eric Bogosian
and writer/painter Michael Zwack.
Viewing this work, twenty years later, its Lower
East Side mis en scene – with its vacant buildings, rubble strewn
lots and automobile caresses – more closely resembles the slums
of Jacob Riis than its current manifestation. The work recycles footage
Auder shot throughout the 1970s much of which features his daughter
Alexandra Auder. Bogosian's presence makes this a work of the 1980s.
Yet, a cameo by Jim Jim, heroin dealer of Velvet
Underground fame, connects the work, and by default, Auder, to the subculture
of a previous generation which inhabited much of the same stomping grounds.