In her teaching, Adina Bar-On dares to do what is often described as an impossibility at German art colleges: to teach the subtleties, the linguistically elusive, the art-specific and seemingly contradictory – a didactics of freedom and a didactics of the craft of contemporary art.
What is the specific craftsmanship of contemporary artists? No longer handcraft in the conventional sense. It is a specific view, an ability to see the whole, to reflect in their actions, to perceive the world in its many facets. Increasingly, this ability is also being attributed to artists externally. In teaching, this capacity is addressed but it is usually left to the students themselves to acquire it during the course of their studies. It could be a manifestation of the concern to destroy something quasi-sacred through systematization. And indeed, art seems to represent the non-systematic, the multiplicity of the world. Adina Bar-On takes nonetheless the step of imparting this non-systematic, far more complex aspect of art. She teaches how observes one`s own gaze and be able to show it. She teaches the subtleties of movement, or art, of perception.
Movement of thought, movement of vision, performance as a medium as delicate as drawing. Adina teaches what a person – a body – does in space, not in term of acting or dancing, but what a body can do from a specifically artistic point of view. Contemporary performance art can learn something from this perception – the search for an adequate form, with an open end, yet clear, and despite the similitude to everyday movements, the qualities that can go beyond them.