About
LABA BCN brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to study classical Jewish
texts, experiment, and explore the futures of Jewish art and culture.
LABA BCN offers an annual creative fellowship program for up to 10 scholarship artists. We study
from Judaism’s rich literary and intellectual traditions, in a free and creative setting so that these
fertile ideas and stories spark new thoughts and creative work. The outputs from our laboratory
push the boundaries of what Jewish culture can be and what Jewish texts can teach.
The call for the 2024 program is now closed.
Theme
Drumroll please… or maybe, more appropriate – a whisper. we’re excited to announce that the next LABA theme is NIGHT.
NIGHT, in the Jewish imagination, is both a matter of time and a state of mind. Our days begin at night, the arrival of three stars is our first sign of tomorrow. Our calendar is lunar, our months and years obsessively coordinated with the waxing and waning of the moon. Our festivals are backlit by the orb at its fullest.
Night is more than a time marker, however. It is also a paradoxical psychological state, when urges too messy, too irrational, and too wild for the day emerge, whether through dreams or behaviors or habits or the thoughts that only voice themselves at 3 am. Night is obscurity, but it is also clarity. Night is freedom, but it is also sometimes cruelty. Only in darkness can some truths be revealed. The cosmos began with night, and from night the very atoms humming our bodies came. We can never know ourselves fully, as a person or a people, without a deep understanding of night.
This year at LABA we will explore the theme of NIGHT in the ancient Jewish canon. We will look at how and why NIGHT anchors us, liberates us, terrifies us through a study of evocative stories from the Torah, Talmud, Mishnah, Zohar and more. We will consider the role of NIGHT in the life of culture-makers, and the ways in which culture-makers are the “NIGHTS” of people — truth-tellers, tricksters, beauty-makers, and deep sea subconscious divers. Most importantly, we’ll have a great time talking, eating, drinking, learning, and laughing in the lush, fertile, free-flowing, romantic, super-serious, and endlessly playful environment of LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture.
We invite you to point your flashlight towards uncharted territories–places you might cherish, wish to destroy, or both– and propose new work inspired by what night brings up in you. All mediums accepted, and the strange and unconventional are always welcome.
Fellows
News
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Remembrance Ceremony: Honouring our Ancestors – Montjuïc old Cemetery, Barcelona.
LABA BCN Fellow, Kevin Buckland, uses art, ceremony and study to raise awareness and new imaginaries around the forgotten medieval jewish cemetery on Montjuïc in Barcelona. On September 29th he will work with Yad Miriam to convene an annual ceremony and performance of remembrance to explore ideas of belonging-in-diaspora, tensions between political and traditional law,
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LABA BCN Tikkun Shavuot 2024
Thanks to all LABA BCN fellows and all Tikkun Shavuot NIGHT participants, for a beautiful, memorable experience!
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LABA Barcelona open call 2024
Application for LABA 2024 fellowship program is now closed. Application dates: January 22nd- February 19th LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Art and Culture LABA brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines to study classical Jewish texts, experiment, and explore the futures of Jewish art and culture. LABA is a non-religious house of study
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Launching event of LABA Barcelona at Casa Adret, June 10th, 2023
LABAbel – Art & Study event June 10th, 2023, 19–22 hrs Casa Adret – Calle Salomo ben Adret 6, Barcelona. We are pleased to invite you to the launching event of Laba Barcelona, at Casa Adret LABA brings together artists from all backgrounds and disciplines, to study classical Jewish texts, to experiment and to explore
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Events
LABA BCN LIVE EVENTS!
November 23-24. 2024
SAVE THE DATE!
FELLOWS
Dafne Ortiz Salazar
Laba Process/Project
Dafne specializes in comics. Publicist and social researcher by training, she pours her observations into her visual narrative, mostly hand-drawn and filled with references to popular culture. Born in Mexico, she learned to tell tales in the Casa de los Cuentos in Barcelona, writing with the Gotham Writers Workshop of New York and drawing in the Royal Drawing School of London. She’s in the process of publishing her first graphic novel, Mothermorphosis, about her emotional journey through early pregnancy.
Dídac Pintor Codina
Laba Process/Project
Didac Pintor is a Barcelona- based artist whose work has evolved from conceptual art to an ongoing investigation of drawing, painting and calligraphy processes. He has participated in Barcelona’s annual Open Studio initiatives for many years. He has also held exhibitions, published books/articles and taken part in artist residencies abroad.
Eyal Zadik
Laba Process/Project
Eyal Zadik is a filmmaker and a screenwriter, based in Barcelona, originally from Israel. He considers storytelling as the craft of an emotional conspirator, who plants clues, illusions, and imagery to guide the audience towards a moment of profound revelation and comprehension, revealing the intricate web of its narrative. In his work, Eyal deals with marginal characters and stories from the social periphery following years of working with at risk populations. His short films were screened and won awards around the world.
Gil Dori
Laba Process/Project
Gil Dori is composer, professor, and co-founder of EyeHarp – the first accessible musical instrument that is played with the eyes. His music, albeit contemporary and mostly electronic, often involves Jewish themes. Gil holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Arizona State University, and teaches at the College of New Technologies of University of Barcelona.
Janet Lenore Stein
Laba Process/Project
Janet Lenore Stein is an artist residing in Barcelona, Spain. Born and educated in the United States and working in assorted media including oil painting, watercolor painting, pen and ink, charcoal, digital media and sculpture, seeks to share her observations and explorations combining vision and mood.
Kevin Buckland
Laba Process/Project
Kevin Buckland is an internationally renowned activist, artist and cultural organizer who uses art and creativity as tools to challenge, transform and question the dominant narratives and logics of our societies. He has been a professional climate justice artivist for the past 15 years, during which time he has facilitated and led countless public performances, protests and trainings on 5 continents.
Ionah Bat Nour Maikov
Laba Process/Project
The hyphen in the Russian-Mizrahi origin, Barcelona-based multidisciplinary artist. By passion: ceramist (organic forms and pigments) and poet/writer. By profession: actitudinal and transition designer for the sustainable horizontal communities. Short distance runner. In free time from work, he dreams of owning a rural house with a small garden.
Mai Choma
Laba Process/Project
Mai is a classically trained violinist with a fascination for Balkan and Klezmer fusion and ethno jazz. She received her masters degree in contemporary performance and production from Berklee Valencia Campus in 2020, and her artist diploma in classical performance from the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía Madrid in 2019.
Micaela Clubourg
Laba Process/Project
Micaela Cluburg is an Argentine Fashion Designer currently living in Barcelona. She is also a Professor and Entrepreneur committed to fostering a sustainable future within the textile ecosystem. She advocates for regenerative design and champions the return to traditional practices for a more sustainable environment.