The digital book by Gili Sitton (in Hebrew)

“Between image and content: Women`s Performance art in Israel

About the performance works of Adina Bar-On.”

בין דימוי לתוכן: פרפורמנס ארט נשי בישראל”

“על עבודתה של אמנית המיצג עדינה בר-און

A link to the book

A Synopsis of the film – “A Woman of the Pots”

“We have been living in Tel Aviv for 3 years. We were in indecision and uncertainty for several years until we realized where we would like to make our home. We had lived in various regions and in several types of communities until we finally decided to make our home in the city – in Tel Aviv – at least for the next period of our lives.
We bought an apartment in one of the older buildings in the city, and we renovated it. For almost an entire ear we worked, day by day, until we succeeded in bringing the apartment to a state in which we could feel comfortable as a family.
But today we know that renovating an apartment or making a place suitable in the fullest sense, for a specific family, is not a one-year project nor a two-year project – It is a lifetime project”.

“We dreamed of a house overlooking the Hula Valley; a home that through its window we could view the snow-caped Hermon mountain; a home that in its backyard flows the Iyyon stream. We dreamed of a home in the village of Metula where the spring season bursts in a multiplicity of colors.
Metula was founded by the Rothschild family at the turn of the 20th century. The inhabitants of the village are of the same families who had come to live there over 100 years ago. These people are industrious farmers, prospering on apple, pear, and peach groves; they are people very much involved in their own internal political affairs; they are a people busying themselves in the spatial orders of a border settlement. These people, of Metula, had little time and energy left to invest in absorbing a new family into their cocommunity.”

“We left Metula to settle a tenement community project built in the beginning of the 1960`s, called Kiron. We lived there for 3 years until we moved to Tel Aviv.”

The above quotations convey the experience that is in essence of the performance theater – A Woman of the Pots. When finished, the footage that was filmed on the basis of the performance, will deal, as well, with the ongoing search for a home for a family. In this case, an Israeli family, of artists, journeying through the country until they will finally settle in Tel Aviv.

The text quoted above is the synopsis of the film`s script spoken in Hebrew and English. But the complexity of the situation will be conveyed in the film by the following:
1. by the various expression forms other than the spoken narrative.
2. by filming on location on the Yarkon stream estuary, by the Reading Power Station (as opposed to a gallery, as in the performance).

The film will begin with the story of a family, told by a woman seated on a three-wheeled stool. In between the different scenes the woman moves on the stool, which leads her in her search for places to live. In this movement on the stool a transition takes place, shifting between the “I” that experiences the events, to the “choir” that describes them in other “languages”: movement, vocals, and percussion music, produced by Shlomo Deshet, played on clay pots.

When filming in the open landscape, certain visual components that exist on the site can be facilitated in order to sharpen certain ideas imbedded in the performance.  The performance was filmed in an island-like location, on the Yarkon estuary, on which 70 pots were implanted, created especially for this occasion by Daniel Davis. Reading, the Power Station, built in Bauhaus style, is integrated in the film as a dominant image, as well as the sea with its altering tide, the bridge that crosses the Yarkon stream, the urban mass of Tel Aviv, and the change of daylight during an entire day. The cinematic collage, Woman of the Pots, begins at sunrise and ends at sunset, and will be composed of the following scenes:
1.The story of the search for a home – Narration and movement, of the woman, filmed in a spacious cement lot, in full daylight, with the Reading Power Station in the background.
2.The militarist – A movement and voice scene performed by the woman, on the island, at noon, in high tide, amongst the pots floating, flooded by the sea.
3. The Dance – A dance scene performed by the woman, accompanied by Shlomo Deshet, a musician, who is tapping on the pottery, on the island, in the late afternoon, after the high tide.
4. The scream – A melodic lament sung with expression by the woman in gibberish. The scene takes place on the island, desolate, apart from the two tall pots, in the setting sun.

Now don`t think it was such an easy task to find a place to live. We spent week-ends and holidays in search of a home. We crossed the country high and low, literally from Metulah to Eilat. There wasn`t a  Moshav, A kibbutz, an Ayarat Pituah, a Mitzpe, we didn`t visit …”

When we first got married we rented an Arab house in Bakaa. I liked its internal structure, it was so congenial …”

Jerusalem`s population was growing and the houses I remembered Jerusalem by were over shadowed by huge apartment building …”

And with the growing antagonism between populations, in the city, we could no longer take o strolls in the old city. And so, we decided to move to Ramat Ha`sharon where Danny had grown up. In Ramat Ha`sharon we rented a house that had been built by a couple who had come from Germany before the rise of the 3rd Reich. It was a small house, situated on 2 dounams of land with every kind of fruit tree, you can imagine, on it: Orange trees, Apple trees, Avocado trees … it was a true Garden of Eden …”

But Ramat Ha`sharon was changing as tall walls were built around private homes and the expansive cultivated lands were covered by cement floors allotting only small areas for some greenery …”

“We left Ramat Ha`sharon and we followed the call of the government to come and live in Galil.”