About “Aesthetics and Bias – Polish Israeli Art Student Meeting”

I am an artist and I teach art – these words are only seemingly simple, but the meanings rendered by the words “artist” and “teacher of art” are, for me, of a very personal nature.

It has been 45 years since the spring of 1973, when I presented my first performance. I was then a third-year student at the Art Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Becoming disconcerted with my work as a painter, and a growing need to find another form of expression that would impact the social consciousness of my viewers, were for me the beginning of another way of life. “I wanted to create work in Real Time and Real Space, as opposed to a work on the two-dimensions of a sheet of paper which exists in an illusory space. I wanted to create a situation in which the viewer would be obligated not only to his or her own intellect but to a private dialogue, resonating with a humane sensibility and ethical commitment, which will result in an emerging individual point of view that is not to be maneuvered by external factors, fashions, or genre.”

In reflecting on my initial years at the academy, in the 1970’s, I find that the academy was symptomatic of Israeli society as a whole; the majority of students had recently completed two to three years of obligatory military service, and some of the all-male faculty were serving in the army reserves. The elation following the Six-Day War and the consequent occupation of the Palestinian territories (and domination of their population), and the disillusionment that followed soon after, in 1973, in the catastrophic Yom -Kippur War, catalyzed Israeli art. New dimensions of artistic expression emerged. Works that responded to national issues, which had remained unspoken until then, surfaced all of a sudden in a contemporary artistic idiom that bridged the divide from the art scenes of Europe and New York.

In my work as well, a new sensibility was awakened, one that diverted me away from painting. Having been inspired, until then, by William de Kooning`s abstract expressionism, or Yehezkel Streichman`s abstract lyricism, I now found their relevance only in the ambiance of expressionism and lyricism, and in the non-textual attitude. But otherwise, my former art practice was no longer pertinent. What had triggered my individual dissension was, most of all, my teachers’ ways of assessing students’ work. Or more accurately, their attitude and even their behavior when viewing such work; I observed that my teachers were evaluating students’ endeavors with an over-intellectual approach, an inflexibility which was manifested in insistently comparing the students’ works to the relevant instances from art history. This rang a warning signal within me. I felt strongly that although the essence of academism is the reaffirming of what had already been culturally confirmed as the Relevant Art, in fact art — whether a student’s or not — cannot be assessed only by judgmental comparisons with art history; I had felt then, as I do now, that art should provoke in its audience an awareness of their own individual opinions and reactions, and reflection on their own private lives.
I was searching for a mode of expression that would raise my audience’s consciousness regarding their private, subjective thoughts. As a consequence, after my first performance the academy`s psychologist was asked to come and view my work, upon which viewing I received a letter from the directors of Bezalel informing me that I will not graduate unless I return to engaging in the conventional mediums. I was seeking to communicate by relying not solely on textual or cultural awareness, but on the audience’s own biased reactions. In an old notebook I found this excerpt from the brilliant writing of Jerzy Grotowski, which I had apparently rephrased: “Something happens to my art when it is codified and summed up by the art critic; something happens to the nuances and subtleties of the performance that has been classified and categorized. Something terrible happens to the audience when it arrives with preset and predetermined ideas — the discovery disappears as well as the enchantment of the human encounter.”

On my quest for my own artistic idiom, I sought encounters with a variety of audiences from different layers of society and diverse cultural backgrounds. Whether performing or teaching, I was in pursuit of a process through which to delve beneath the sphere of language, and eventually develop an art practice accessible to all audiences, and a method of teaching applicable to every student. As I write this, I can imagine eyebrows being raised; but in truth, I now know that my work indeed engages many who would not be considered regular “consumers of art.”

I have performed for workers in the port of Ashdod, new immigrants to Israel, women in Palestinian villages, students in Bethlehem, and in countries across the globe; I have also performed in diverse locations such as shopping malls, bomb shelters, urban centers and streets, rural hillsides and meadows; in all these sites, I brought to the fore the connection between the setting and the social situation. Through involvement with and instruction of students from the disciplines of art, dance, music, theater, and film in Israel, Asia, Europe and the US, I have a clear and experiential understanding that the cultural forms I am familiar with are not the only manifestations of culture. My discourse, whether qua artist or teacher, stands apart. As László Beke, the Hungarian art historian who encountered my work as early as 1999, writes: “Adina Bar-On’s Performance Art is an art of Communication (put this way it sounds pretty common), and within this the art of addressing. Both in her Budapest piece (Sacrifice) and the workshop there were moments that obviously alluded to this: at the beginning after an intensive internal meditation she faced the audience (or one of its members) and waited, doing nothing, until this nothing (“tense nothing”) became nearly unbearable. This is the kind of address that prepares the audience mentally and spiritually for the reception of forthcoming events. At the same time the spectator knows that he does not have the right to talk back – but as a reward the artist is increasingly sincere and straight.” As I myself described it at the time: “If I gaze directly into the viewer’s eyes, like the figures in Rembrandt’s portraits, the viewer can only respond to my gaze with his or her true thoughts.”
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“Aesthetics and Bias” was a project for art students of various backgrounds who wished to generate art and artistic encounters and to reflect on the bias, prejudice and myths which are an inseparable part of culture, and on the common frameworks through which we function, assess, and judge each other and ourselves. I conceived “Aesthetics and Bias” in 2006, as a collaboration between the Bezalel Academy and Dar al-Kalima College, in Palestine, a collaboration which did not materialize in the end. The concept was revived in 2008 during the Israel-Poland year, as part of a broad educational endeavor by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute dedicated to relations between the two countries.

This project was a collaboration between Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and four major art institutions in Poland, and their dedicated representatives: Prof. Prot Jarnuszkiewicz, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Prof. Artur Tajber, Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow; Prof. Piotr Kielan, Mr. Tomasz Opania, Ms. Maria Wronska, Academy of Fine Art and Design in Wroclaw; Prof. Marek Wasilewski, University of Arts in Poznan.

Over the course of the project, each of the 120 participants, six groups of 20 students, took part in two meetings, one in Israel and one in Poland; every group of ten Polish students from one of the Polish academies came to Israel for ten days in order to meet and work with a group of ten Israeli students from Bezalel. In turn, each group of Israeli students then traveled to Poland to meet with their Polish counterparts for a ten-day meeting.

This project consisted of visits to selected crucial sites in Israel and Poland, interwoven with intense interdisciplinary workshops which were usually held at the locations themselves. The workshops included guided discussions aimed at stimulating students’ thought, expression, and art (see the displayed daily schedules in Warsaw and Israel).

It was cardinal that the students spend as much time together as possible — all day and most of the evenings; It was cardinal that the visits to the selected sites in their respective countries include both Polish and Israeli students so that the two groups will be exposed to each other’s perspectives and insights. Discussions, held almost daily, enabled the students to share responses and provoked the surfacing of latent attitudes and differences. As one student noted in a written summary (this and all student comments are from written student responses collected at the end of the project): “I felt that the dialogue between students conducted by Adina was very significant and authentic, and precisely when halted by difficulty it exposed the underlying truths and fears of each side. I was surprised to see that discussion did not fall into clichés and was not bound by the limits of ‘political correctness.’ It was bold, honest and interesting. I liked the fact that the question underlying question was ‘What is good art?’ This led me to consider what narratives I will choose to engage with in the future.”

Other discussions occurred more spontaneously in smaller gatherings, at night, in the kitchen, at home, at the end of the day. In these instances, more personal stories were exposed, touching on one`s family, and attitudes pertaining to religion — whether Catholic, Jewish or Muslim — were shared. This was significant as it lent an additional impact. As one participant wrote: “One cannot separate the experience from the intimacy generated in each Israeli-Polish pair; arriving home at night, exhausted and sometimes a little drunk, processing the day’s events together…. Personal conversations around education, childhood, and the people that we have grown up to be in the culture, were the most significant for me.

The workshops had essentially two aims. The first was to stimulate awareness of the selected sites and locations as substance and content in and of themselves. These workshops were often conducted on site, at chosen landmarks: in Israel a hill overlooking the Palestinian village of Issawiya, and a panoramic lookout on the old city of Jerusalem; and in Poland, at the foot of the giant statue of Jesus that towers over the countryside in Świebodzin, and in the old Jewish synagogue which, since 1941 and until recently, had served as a public swimming pool. The second aim was to acquaint the students with the relationship between their habitual, everyday conduct, and their art-making process. Through the conscious practice of seemingly simple physical exercises and ordinary movements – walking, maneuvering, approaching, touching – a fresh awareness of one’s own behavior was provoked. As one of the students wrote: “For me, the times when we reflected together on our joint experiences, whether in the discussions or in the workshops, was essential. I think of the workshop that was conducted after we toured the museum of Tadeusz Kantor, for example. It intrigued me to see how an encounter between two persons can be translated into ordinary spatial gestures and how well such a translation reflects the way I experience the encounter in real-time and supports later processing.”

In concluding an exercise which I titled: “One’s entity as an individual and as a member of a group,” one participant accurately noted that ways of moving through space depict both personal and social patterns of behavior: “The three of us were moving independently in the room, walking and looking about and not relating to any of the physical elements there. I mean, we did not approach the wall, chairs or each other, and yet I was amazed at the sudden realization that our movements had grown intertwined, and that without any forethought we were engaged and moving together in a distinct group pattern”.

Another crucial aspect of the project was that the students were compelled to produce art work; the eighth and ninth day of each of the 10-day meetings was dedicated to presentations, which required that the students gather their materials throughout the project. Although formal times for personal work was scheduled, students had to stay in “work-mode” at all times. The presentation formats included short, digitally recorded and lightly edited videos, hand sketches, verbal drafts, sound recordings, or photographed images. It was not an easy task for students to maintain creative focus while immersed in the dynamics of a traveling, site seeing, and social intrusions; nothing could be more different from the quiet contemplative mode of their private studios. Yet this experience, which in fact lent itself to some of the best work on exhibition, demonstrated that art can offer an immediate response and stance formulated in real time, rather than (Laboriously digested and) delayed. “The lifestyle I observed from a distance and through a foreigner’s eyes, led me to ask what it is I have to say. I understood that it is when art takes a stance via society rather than staying in its incubator (as mine had until this point) the results are very interesting. Especially when art functions in a societal context and does not limit itself to dealing with materials, design and display. The fact that at the project’s end we had to create a presentation that included ideas and thoughts about our experience helped me express my ideas in a more communicative way and to come up with a statement that I could stand behind.”

Over the course of the encounters, which as mentioned, were composed of visits to major sites of historical, social, national, and religious significance, discussions, both monitored and private, and workshops, I strove to awaken a discourse, hardly prevalent enough in art education, which is not political but rather cultural and humane: one that will enable students to cross the boundaries of language, and to examine themselves as socially conscious artists. The project posed an educational opportunity, a cultural framework for intellectual, emotional, and creative discussions, in which interpersonal points of view were recognized, as well as inter-group, intra-cultural, and cross-cultural ones, all, in an attempt to achieve a genuine discussion regarding stereotypes and ways to loosen their hold using the common idiom of visual communication, and the making of contemporary art.

In light of the grave contents that we touched upon, perhaps the works presented in the exhibition are still searching their way beyond that which is obvious. Despite or because of this, I find much value in revealing the young artists’ work to the public, as testimony to the deep roots of bias and its historic perseverance. This tenacity arouses true amazement, and points to the desperate necessity for discussion.