Location:
The Janco-Dada Museum at Ein Hod Artists’ Village, Israel.
The audience was seated on the museum`s balcony, overlooking a panoramic view of the Carmel Mountains. The seats were arranged on a platform that allowed only a confined picture of the landscape, as if a scene depicted in the frame of a cinematographer. My performance was conducted about 500 meters away from the viewers, in and along the mountainous scene, and in front of the audience seated on the museum’s balcony.
Time:
The performance began at early sunset, and ended one hour later, when it was nearly dark.
Sequence:
a) The audience, who were 35 persons at most, was greeted by my daughter Yasmin, seventeen years old in 1989, directed to their seats and treated to a glass of wine. When it was time to begin, Yasmin signaled me with a white flag, and I waved back at her from my location at the western hill, with my own white flag. With this exchange of signals the cinematic music[1], which accompanied my entire conduct in the landscape, started playing.
 b) From the balcony, the audience’s gazes surveyed the scene: from the Mediterranean sea in the west, aligning the pastel dusk colored sky, to the grove vegetation, across to the lone pine-trees and an old olive plantation[2] to the east. At the distance, they saw me as a white figure that moved within and across the landscape. I was visible when passing through a path made by goats, ascents of chalk rock, clearances amongst the trees; I was hidden, every now and then, when behind clusters of trees, laying in the long hedge, or crawling in the bushes.
I moved in a variety of expressions. At some instances I conveyed information that was as simple as sign posts, for instance: Forward, I stretched out my hands in front of me and following them, my tilted body pushed my legs into small, hurried steps forward, and so again and again; Here, where I bounced in one spot while I waved my arms out, stretched above my head towards both sides of my body, and so again and again. Other movements were imitations of the physical characterization of a place, such as dancing circularly in a clearance, rolling on a decline. Yet the above transmitted basic spatial information, fluctuations of speed, rhythm, energy, even fragmented movement, added complexities to the otherwise simple information, and thus more leeway for the viewer’s interpretations. At many instances, rocks or fallen branches also influenced the movement, but due to the viewers’ great distance from me, they had no clue of these existing obstacles; their understanding of the situation they saw  was independent of the actual consequences, and thus each viewer created her or his own individual narrative. There were also physically enclosed and rather static situations, as, for instance, when I sat on the ground with my leg tucked under me, my torso rounded and leaning downward, and my head bent inward to my chest. Such a position was clearly discerned as emotionally entangled, but since the distance could not entail more visual details, one made up her or his own alibi pertaining to what was seen[3].
So my work validated each individual in the audience with her or his own thoughts; each viewer realized one’s private associations, and understood that these opinions and insights are her or his own and different from the viewer who is seated beside them. There was one position which was repeated more than once throughout the performance: the reclining position, which was repeated as a chorus in this work, and is common in my other works as well. Here, I was reclining, with my back to the audience, and my face turned and gazing at my audience[4]. This image validates me with my audience and vice versa; it articulates the fact that we, performer and audience, are equals in creating significance; not solely by our physical presence but by our mental awareness.
c) While the audience was engrossed in the landscape, Yasmin indicated to the audience to put on the headphones, which were placed underneath each one’s chair. Now they were listening to my voice speaking to them[5], while they continued to observe me moving in the distance.
My speech and the vision in the landscape intertwined; a depiction of a state of mind with a description of the landscape had become interfolded.
This is a sample of a few lines from the monologue:
“But, when I’m with you … despite … and surly like you, too,
longing to take the expanse – actually to move about, to move
and to sense, while moving, the heaps [laughter] of hay – the light!
The wind – it blows,
and the light, and the color, and … the line … the route – I
don’t know where it’s going, but I so much, I
so much believe.”
d) During the eight final minutes of my recorded monologue, I wasn’t seen in the landscape; I was making my way from the landscape, and I appeared in front of the audience, on the balcony, at the precise moment the monologue ended. Then, I reclined at the base of the railing with my back to the viewers, and I watched the landscape that they had been looking at. Despite my back-position, my gazes could be well deciphered from the tilt of my head: from a profile, I was looking out to sea, with my head pulled back I was looking at the sky, and so on, with more of the variant angles, ranges of fluctuation and rhythms.
But now, the close proximity of the “reclining woman with landscape” made the association with art history unmistakably vivid. The link of body positions to images from the art history is very common in my works; a tie between the personal experience and the social memory. The transition from the private contexts to the historical context serves as a reminder that one’s point of view is not aloof of other influences, and this is something that a person must be conscious of and pay attention to.
e) I finally turned around, stood up and faced the audience. I swayed sideways with my gaze to the sea and upwards to the sky; I glimpsed over my shoulder to the landscape and a then forward to the audience, but – I did not see them; my eyes looked to the audience’s direction as if there was a screen that did not allow my gaze to penetrate it. Similarly, without focusing my sight, I created patterns of movement with my eyes; I moved my eyes in rotation or back and forth, to the sides, opened and shut my eyelids as in a flicker. I was moving the eyes, this crucial organ, and the audience watched and merely identified, having known this other sort of eye movement from their childhood. After having exercised sight in so many capacities, those patterns of eye-movement came as a respite, a restart, for the viewers as well as for me, towards the final gaze to which I have finally arrived. I did, finally, gaze at the audience wishing that each one will have claimed it; that my gaze will be reciprocated, if only out of an honest sense that it was a work for which all of us were responsible.

[1] The electronic sound-work was composed by Yossi Mar-Chaim, who is a prominent Israeli composer. Mar-Chaim created the music while he watched an early performance’s live documentation on video. The music corresponds exactly to the sequence in the landscape that he saw on the screen. My intention was that the audience’s experience, while listening to the recorded music will suggest the experience of watching a film. In addition, it is important to note that I did not hear the music while I was performing; it was the audience alone which heard it projected by stereo on the veranda.

[2] The village of Ein Hod is situated on a hillside amidst olive groves, with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Ein Hod was the site of the Palestinian village of Ein Hawd. Most of the Arab inhabitants were expelled during the war, however, some remained in the area and settled nearby, forming a new village, also by the name of Ein Hawd.

[3] My actions grew with an awareness of how I would appear to the viewers from half a kilometer away. When I was in the process of creating View, I was in the habit of observing the shepherds in the distant groves; I watched their conversations, restful moments, lunch-break under the olive tree, from the museum’s veranda. I was fascinated by the fact that I could see them so vividly despite the distance. This performance-work is about human beings’ capability to recognize and empathize with another’s activity.

[4] These human figures which gaze into the viewer’s space, as in the paintings of Rembrandt, Goya, and Ingres, are initial manifestation of art which holds social consciousness.

[5] The monologue heard in the headphones was nearly 30 minutes long, and it was prerecorded. It enhanced the sense of intimacy between the viewers and the situation that they were observing, though it was clear that I was not speaking to them from the landscape. The entire monologue can be read and heard on this page of the performance View.

The complete soundtrack that the audience listens to while watching Adina in the distant olive grove.