Performance-art involving voice utterance is not considered sound art. Nonetheless, some cases call for a creative theoretical investigation that might involve not only questions concerning performance-art as usually understood, but also questions regarding sound art and experimental music. The performance-art aspect would scrutinize voice as a kind of bodily action of the artist’s body. The sound-art aspect would focus on the plastic qualities of sound as such; produced by a physical object and creating reverberations in a concrete architectonic space. The experimental-music aspect would examine the phenomenon in relation to music, expanding the concept of music to include diverse sorts of acoustical events and noises in the spirit of John Cage.

Musicians and artists have been inter-experiencing these three issues from the Sixties on, gradually increasing the importance of sound in the plastic and the performing arts. Performance-artists were conscripting their own voice to perform texts, songs, and pure human utterances, thus being a source of inspiration for experimental theatre and contemporary dance.

I believe the best way to learn something about the intricacy of using pre-verbal voice in performance-art is to carefully observe and listen to contemporary artistic practice, equipped with insights concerning the historical and conceptual interweaving of the three mentioned domains. Living in Israel, I will address the work of performance-artist Adina Bar-On, who has been active in Israel and abroad since the Seventies. When using her voice, Bar-On pays no attention to musical parameters like rhythm, melody, or pitch. Her voice utterance is not an interpretation, nor a performance of a pre-existing idea. Rather, it is the thing itself; a human sound physically produced out of the artist’s body and as if experienced by her from within. In a way, Bar-On treats her voice pieces like sound installations. She will practice several days at the place where the work is to be presented, testing its acoustic conditions, and tune the piece for that specific space. She is producing voice as an exhibited performance act on the one hand and as physical matter reverberating in space on the other. This makes her work an informative and interesting link in the chain of concepts connecting performance art, sound art, and experimental music.