While reflecting upon an important meeting and trying to decipher its outcome, I may hear my own voice quietly exclaiming: “… I don’t know”, or “He is so nice…” – It seems as if my voice speaks out, of its own accord. My voice seems to come from an invisible source, scarcely recognizable in breathless and soft utterances. I have tolerated theses sounds, as that which is inevitably excreted from within. I have recognized them as my inner nature and had thought that most everyone bares such sounds from within, and therefore, I had concluded that sounds could be divided into those which we hear and those which are only heard by the one who produces them.

It was Rafi Lavvy who had commented, following Walking on a Thin Line, in 1979, that he would have liked to hear that which is inevitably excreted from within, which I was exclaiming so quietly to myself while performing. I was humming a tune, a simple and melodic one, during that performance, from a children’s Hollywood film, but the sort of sound that Lavvy had insinuated to, a sound which would be mine, audible, and fluent, was yet to be heard.

Following the First Lebanon War, in 1983, Salute was created. I was standing, elevated on a three-meter structure, audibly articulating an actual oration in gibberish, in a language of indecipherable utterances, not melodic, but one which I had lacked when speaking a real language. Despite the nonsensical sentences, or maybe because of them, I had now learned a manner of fluency in using my voice.

Sacrifice is a voice-performance which had evolved throughout 15 years, from a small oration in 1990, in Woman of the Pots, until 2005, at which time it had been finally recorded as an audio CD. In this performance, my gibberish had developed into other voice aptitudes. Sacrifice is composed of enunciations in gibberish, and sound structures that are reminiscent of marches, lullabies, women`s chatter, a baby crying, screams, and anguish. Victor Petrov wrote that: “Concentrated emotions, plaintive singing and scream, gesture, extreme emotionality. This is the inner dialogue of a screaming soul, a tale of time, reflections of one`s place in the world. The powerful vocal sounds accompanying it are associations with femininity, love and the origins of life.” Although these sounds and their definite associations served as inspiration in this work, their actualization was not only in imitation of the imagery. The reading of the performance as a textual presence had been important to Sacrifice, but the physical, bodily producing of the sounds are an auditory element, sensed and identified and therefore essential in comprehending this work; I had imagined the sound of my voice as matter, physical, with the consistency, of shape, of texture, of weight, of temperature – as detailed and as real as imagination can envision. I had then animated my internal muscles, contracting and expanding them, to various extents, and to imagined forms, with care and energetic thrusting, with flexibility and stiffness, with attention to breathing and swallowing, and contraction and expanding of abdomen and womb, thus, maneuvering the sounds within my body. In this plasticity, the physical dialogue, of the movement of the visible and invisible organs, in the torso, and the limbs and, of course, the shoulders, neck, head, and face will have physically facilitated the production of sounds. The imagined materiality of the sound will have also altered the movement of muscles of face, and the mouth, to their final excretion of the substance; “The enunciation had been formed with a swirl of my lips, a slight forcefulness, in an angular pressuring from my cheeks and a slight maneuvering of my tongue, with all the physicality accompanied in the composing of the movement, and, enabling the vocal muscles produce a deliciously audible something – in the final act. The pleasure of producing the sound is even more satisfying than hearing it though, I must admit, that once I had become conscious of the physical procedure, and its result, then I also learned to appreciate the sequence, as whole, and had repeatedly practiced the procedure and its audible outcome.”

I never gained nor sought an official education for using my voice. I felt that I will learn, the knowledge I seek, from my own intuitive research. Performances I created had been presented at different locations so that the visuals and sound served as components, which had to be examined and recreated, for each specific location. The first to consider was the effect of the architectural structure on sound and acoustics, on lighting, and on the atmosphere. The second, was the number of persons and their physical situations, within the given space. I arrange the spaces for the exact manner in which people would sit, stand, lie down, or walk. These points of view and sound, angles and distance, shades and tones, would be the sum of the coordinates of that individuals experience in the Human Installation.

In 2005, I performed during the Second Lebanon War. I will relate only to a part of Dreamy, as it was performed at The Heder Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. The installation was created, formed by the eventual laying of the entire audience on the floor, and by the movement of my voice, as I lay amongst them, rising from the floor and rebounding from the walls. The following is an account of the later part of this event, describing my attitude in creating the voice-work from two well-known songs: “The floor was a design of laid down persons – I let my body down to the floor, as well, but this time on my own. I laid myself on my back with my head beside another’s head, nearly touching it, while the rest of my body was in a diagonal, aligned from his head along his body. I remained there for a moment and then rose to resituate myself. I lay again on my back, this time in a straight angle to a young woman, with my head resting on her stomach. I was now ready to resume singing. I had merged two songs whose combination was objectively remote, but which I liked together since they served as emotional points of departure, potent with personal associations. The two songs were: 1)”Somewhere (There’s a Place for Us)”, from Leonard Bernstein’s American Musical West Side Story, 1957, and 2) Avinu Malkeinu”, a Jewish prayer recited during Jewish services on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as on the Ten Days between the two high holidays.

I started with the love song “There’s a Place for Us”, sung by Maria and Tony, and then sung to each other and by Maria to Tony when he was dying. I released the song from my head and from my stomach, interchanging the sources, the vowels were open and pronounced so that the physicality of the sounds, as bodily compounds, were visible in my body’s expressions. They became audible as they were expounded into the space, rising from within my body, in a plastic presence; resonating from the floor towards the walls and into the open space.

I had never sung the song in its entirety during this performance. My assumption was that if one had recognized the movement, whether visual or auditory, then with this recognition there was no need for me to actualize it any further as the action will have already been achieved, by the audience, in their imagination. By this way of thinking, while I had begun singing “There’s a place for us” in tune with the original, the melody soon evolved by my expression, by my own manners of producing the sounds, as a physicality of an actual substance.

I sang the prayer “Avinu Malkeinu”, meaning “our father, our king”, in a continuous extending breath, evolving organically from my palpitating moving chest and stomach into the space of the mouth, made to sound as if it had materialized, so that its molding onto “There’s a Place for Us” could not be really noticed. The audiences’ ability to recognize a few melodic and tonal transitions and certain words or combinations, was all that was necessary to render the association and impact of expression that I desired.

This hybrid piece was evolved explicitly, in a long process of searching, in voice trials, until I was able to sense the innate logic and authenticity of the work as well as method, technically, with which to enact the production of the sound. In watching a video of my work, whether in movement, speech or sound, it becomes apparent that I am attuned to the live situation which I created together with the audience’s presence. I had a defined plan but its strength was engendered and provoked by the moments shared with the audience. It demanded practice to provoke sounds when I lay on my back, but once I was producing them it became audibly clear that Lamentation and Birth had emerged into one, and that it was about a life that had been irreversibly positioned horizontally.”

When my voice is manifest in words and sentences, in a manner similar to speaking, without sound distortion, these texts may still be altered by slight nuances of voice, which may render them dramatic or poetic. These, spoken texts are always commenting on the situations which the performances allude to, and thus become a reflection on society and social issues. Rest, 1999, 2000, 2016, is inspired by the mythological “Rest for the Weary”, a lullaby written in 1934, by the acclaimed poet Nathan Alterman.

The sites for Rest had been: the buzzing foyer of the Jerusalem Theater, the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center, and the Dizengoff Center mall, in Tel Aviv. The installation – a bed, attached vertically to a wall, its bedsheets patterned with small Israeli flags, and I, the performer, in the bed, under the eiderdown as if asleep. My eyes were shut when I spoke, sang, and when I addressed the audience, who were random passers-by, coming and going at their will, during the three-hour duration of the performance. Earphones were connected to the bed, in which one could hear a reading poem, of sorts, which I wrote, read out to the background of a Geveatron folk song. The two texts in Rest appear in two different performative contexts and both hold an ironic gaze on Israeli society. The following is a word to word and image to image depiction of the performance at the Performing Arts Center: 

[Adina is under the duvet, as if asleep, moves slackly, then rolls about. She breathes heavily, sighs, and starts to speak:] I cannot / No! No! No! [Breaths more deeply, raises her head:] No! No! No!  [Bends her head to the side, and while her hands rub the blanket, she calls out, sensually:] To conquer [Yawns] To conquer to conquer to conquer [Adina shifts the weight of her body slowly to the rear, throws her head back and bursts out in a loud laughter. She turns her body towards the audience, takes the blanket and covers her face with it, bends downward in the direction of the audience, and says in a seductive voice:] And not to give up. [She turns, her face towards the mattress and her back to the audience, raises the blanket above her head, then places the blanket over her shoulders and neck (like a prayer shawl), and says emphatically:] By God. [Adina turns, her face to the audience. She moves down to the lower part of the mattress, lays her head on the folds of the blanket, and starts singing, in a very high voice, her personal version of the song:] Rest has come to the weary [She places her head on the mattress in profile, looking upwards:] and tranquility to the toiler. [She leans on the mattress again, moves down to the half, opens her mouth wide singing or screaming:] on the fields of the land of Israel. [Adina throws her body forward and downward, towards the floor, spreads out her arms and shouts:] Dew Below. [She raises her head and says jestingly:] And a moon above. [She looks at the audience and addresses questions to it while extending her arms in all directions:] Where are you going? Where are you going? How can you forget everything now, everything now? Come, come, come, my brothers/ Come my redeemer brothers. [Adina takes the blanket and rolls it up rapidly. She rises to the height of the pillow, rolls the blanket, sways it as if it were a baby, and addresses the audience again:] Come my brothers/How can you forget now?/Come, come, /Come my brothers. [Again she reaches out her hand and says:] Come, come my brothers [She bursts out laughing, loudly] Ahh … my obnoxious brothers. [Adina moves down to the lower part of the mattress and sings, emphatically:] What, what, night of Night/ Stillness in Israel / Sleep, Land / Land of Splendor / We will be your guard. [Adina falls to a deeper sleep, and the blanket falls from her hands. She repeats this scene, with variations, about four times, before different audiences. In a brief interlude before and after each scene she changes sleeping positions. Through the earphones that hang down from the mattress at the lower part of the bed, the song “Rest has Come to the Weary”, in a treatment of Yossi Mar Chaim, continues playing, and on the foreground of this song Adina says the following text:]

I truly believed that the investment the dedication to my work – I still believe that the investment, the dedication to my work, as an artist, a teacher, a mother and a sister, will further my redemption – our redemption! Of course my life`s work has yielded fruit, but what of this growing fatigue and withering strength? I still believe that my work will reap an abundance, a radiance of good days, renewed strength.

This performance is another one in a line of performance-works, preoccupied with the face of the place I have lived my life in; the Israeli landscape, its people and language – intertwining Hebrew and gibberish, sometimes English, with vocals, suggestively piercing, in search for the authentic.

45 years account for a lot of performances to review, and surly, the interpretation and analyses cannot and should not be mine. Yet, an attempt to transmit, at least, the sensibility, as there is nothing that compares to the experience, of what I had spent so much of my time in doing.

The Israeli wars seem to align alongside my life-work and this is ironic and true, as this reality of tragedies has affected us all. In my quest, I have come about different approaches, in concept and method, of working with voice, language, movement, and objects, but if these conquests could be summarized in succeeding in making my audience aware of their own presence, their own delicate but deep emotions, and their true points of views, as biased as they surly may be, then I would have “reaped an abundance, a radiance of good days, renewed strength.”

1.  Walking on a Thin Line, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1979
2.  Salute, Tel Hai 83, Contemporary Art Event, 1983
3.  Sacrifice, had evolved through numerous presentations in Europe, the Far East and Canada. It had been conceived as a short voice interlude in Woman of the Pots, 1990, and finally recorded as a CD, in 2005, at “Totamto Sound and Music”, Warsaw.
4.  Woman of the Pots, a family performances, together with Daniel, Shahar and Yasmin Davis. – Percussionist was Noam Ha`levi, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1990
5.  Victor Petrov, curator, from the catalogue of the Navinki Festival of International Performance Art `01, in Minsk, Belarus.
6.  My text, from my private archive
7.  My text, an excerpt from Dreamy – from my private archive
8.  Adina Bar-On, Performance Artist, by Idit Porat, Publishe by Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, 2001, P. 97-100
9.  My text, from Rest – from my private archive