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"Clamor in the Desert," a sukkah by Mirta Kumpferminc.
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LABA-BA was launched in Buenos Aires in 2015 by Mirta Kupferminc as artistic director, following her one-year stint as the first-ever international fellow at LABA NY during the year of MOTHER. Inspired by her experience, she began working on the creation of LABA BA. She partnered up with Tova Shvartzman, poet, psychoanalyst, and text scholar, who has taught at LABA BA since the beginning.  

Buenos Aires is home to a vibrant Jewish community and arts and culture scene. LABA BA creates a place where these two worlds can speak, seeding culture-makers with ancient ideas and images that grow inside of them and inform their process and their work.

Buenos Aires has had fellows from a wide range of disciplines: musicians, mimes, actors, comedians, cartoonists, muralists, tea sommeliers, filmmakers, jewelers, etc.

LABA-BA fue lanzado en Buenos Aires en 2015 por Mirta Kupferminc como directora artística, luego de un año como primera becaria internacional en LABA NY durante el año de MADRE. Inspirada por su experiencia, comenzó a trabajar en la creación de LABA BA. Se asoció con Tova Shvartzman, poeta, psicoanalista y estudiosa de textos, que ha enseñado en LABA BA desde el principio.

Buenos Aires es el hogar de una vibrante comunidad judía y una escena artística y cultural. LABA BA crea un lugar donde estos dos mundos pueden hablar, sembrando a los creadores de cultura con ideas e imágenes antiguas que crecen dentro de ellos e informan su proceso y su trabajo.

Buenos Aires ha convocado artistas de las más variadas disciplinas: músicos, mimos, actores, humoristas, dibujantes, muralistas, sommeliers de té, filmmakers, joyeros etc.

 





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    Theme

    "The Other Misunderstanding," by Mirta Kumpferminc.

    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 open section icon

    "Book," by Myriam Jawerbaum

    News open section icon

    “Mother of All Chairs,” by Mirta Kumpferminc.
    • DE TU BOCA A LOS OIDOS DE DIOS

      THE Other Misunderstanding 

      A group exhibition of LABA-Buenos Aires artists has just opened for the first time in New York. The Other Misunderstanding, the present culmination of an ongoing extensive international collaboration with the New York based LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, is on show at the 14th Street Y Gallery through Tikkun Leil Shavuot on May 30th.

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    Events open section icon

    "The Other Misunderstanding," by Silvana Blasbalg.

    Comming Soon

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    FELLOWS
    Rosana Wolochwianski
    Laba Process/Project

    Rosana Wolochwianski is a translator and writer from Rosario, Argentina. She holds a BA in Translation by the National University of Rosario (UNR) and is certified by the American Translators Association (ATA). She also holds a Master degree in Creative Writing by the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF). Throughout her professional life she has presented and published several papers and essays about translation and history in local and international magazines, books and events (American Translators Association (ATA), International Federation of Translators (FIT), Localization World, Translation World, World Congress of Specialized Translation (CMTE),  Localization Latin America, and Groupe de Recherche sur l’Amérique latine (GRAL, CNRS) conferences; Multilingual Computing and Technology, ATA Chronicle, Language Tech News, and Intercambios magazines; Comunicarte, UNR Anuario Segunda Época, and Anthropos Paris compilations; Imago Mundi, Historia Regional, and Homo Sapiens publishers’ translations). She received the first prize in the Short Narrative Contest “Julio Cortázar”, organized by the Argentine Notarial University (UNA) in 2015. In 2020-2021 she took the Argentine Jewish Poetics and Practices Extracurricular Academic Training by the Philosophy and Literature College of the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA), as well as the international seminars on Yiddish and Jewish Culture by the Center for Yiddish Culture in Warsaw and IWO Foundation in Argentina. She is currently working on a series of short stories related to Judaism and on the translation of American Jewish poet Alicia Suskin Ostriker’s works.

    Her webpage is www.rwtraducciones.com.ar.

    Lucia Harari
    Laba Process/Project

    Lucia Harari is an Argentinian visual artist and Feldenkrais method practitioner. She teaches Contemporary Art at Tres de Febrero University, and a mix of Art and movement practices. Her mediums include painting, video-essays and projectual works such as the “Versatile Easel project” she developed in order to insert these art-world devices in the Public/Social Health field, to empower painting for non-normative bodies. She also created a communal virtual archive of dreams, supported by Asylum Arts Jewish Network. She participated of the 8M Price 2023, Andreani, Bienal Sur, Bienal BIT, Desafío Latinoamericano Index Award among many others. Harari has received grants for creation from the Metropolitan Fund for the Arts of Buenos Aires, National Funds for the Arts and Mecenazgo. She is currently working on a documentary about her Syrian roots, and in a piece in dialogue with Yente’s work for the Jerusalem Bienal 2023.

    Cinthia Chomski
    Laba Process/Project

    Cinthia Chomski was born in Buenos Aires, on October 9, 1985. Since she was a child she was interested in visual arts, for which she entered the Fernando Fader School of Arts and Crafts at the age of 13 where she specialized in Interior Design. She has a degree in Scenography from the U.N.A. (National University of the Arts). Between 2010-2016 she was a teacher of the Scenography workshop at the Lola Mora Cultural Center of the Cultural Program in Neighborhoods of the Buenos Aires City Government.  She has been working in theater as a designer, director and assistant since 2008 and as a set designer for television and film projects since 2015. She began experimenting with marquetry in 2011 to later dedicate herself to artistic production applying this resource, with an interest in revitalizing that old trade that is part of her family legacy. The first visual arts project in marquetry was titled La memoria y el árbol and was exhibited for the first time in 2015. In 2019 the documentary film Vino a ser Belleza was premiered, based on the proposal of this (last) project. She currently works in the set design team in two shows of the Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires.

     

    Sergio Saposnic
    Laba Process/Project

    Sergio Saposnic When Sergio Saposnic was born, he was in Floresta. After a few moves, he finally managed to cross Nazca streets, like the Hebrews the Red Sea, and thus managed to escape from the family workshop in Gaona, a stronghold that his zeide Berl had built after escaping from anti-Semitic Europe. It is that at his young fifteen years, Sergio had already understood that nuts and such things were not for him. Their own and others, especially their mother, saw in their embrace of culture a desperate escape from the Egypt of sheet metal and paint rather than a passionate love for letters. For many years, a lucky misunderstanding led him to produce theater, another more uncertain one, to edit books and produce teaching materials and because of a sad confusion he managed a country club that he would never want to be a member of. In the past millennium, Sergio married Alejandra, the only Sephardic woman who does not cook kipe or lajmashin, but with whom he has two lovely children, Martín and Tamara. This made his mother happy, although she did not stop harping on about “how good it would be for you to go back to the workshop, now that you have a family to feed.” His other zeide, Jaime, was persecuted by the Cossacks, Sergio, by his mother. In his indefatigable course, Saposnic resisted as much as he could to study Letters and above all to write with stubborn intentions to publish, but it was useless: his advances in the battle against the superego is and will be for the readers a withdrawal in the stormy road of Literature: “I didn’t know you had written a novel” his mother shot as if in passing but Sergio no longer cared.

     

    Denise León
    Laba Process/Project

    Denise León was born in Tucumán, Argentina, in 1974. She is descendant of Sephardic immigrants. She has published Poemas de Estambul (Poems from Istanbul) Alción, 2008; El trayecto de la herida (The path of the wound) Alción, 2011; El saco de Douglas (The sack of Douglas)Paradiso, 2011; Templo de pescadores (Temple of fishermen) Alción, 2013; Sala de espera (Waiting room) elCRUCEcartonero, 2013; Poemas de Middlebury (Poemas from Middlebury) Huesos de Jibia, 2014 and Mesa de pájaros (Table for birds) Bajo la luna, 2019) and Árbol que tiembla (Trembling tree) La Ballesta Magnífica 2022. She has participated in several international poetry festivals such as Rosario (2009), Córdoba (2014), Mendoza (2014), Federal Word Festival (2015) and International Poetry Festival of Buenos Aires (2015). Her poems have been included in various anthologies such as Por mi boka (Lumen, 2013) and Penúltimos. 33 poets from Argentina 1965-1985 (UNAM 2015), and translated into English and Portuguese. She has a PHD in Latin American Literatura and  is a Researcher at CONICET (Council for Scientific and Technical Research). She currently works as a teacher in the chairs of Hispanic American Literature, National University of Salta and Communication Theory II at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature , National University of Tucumán, Argentina.

    Paloma Schachmann
    Laba Process/Project

    Paloma Schachmann was born in Buenos Aires in 1985. She graduated as a Music Teacher from the Instituto Superior Santa Ana and she currently works as a musician, filmmaker, producer and researcher. As a musician, since 2019 she is a clarinetist for Roberto Moldavsky and La Valentín Gómez, Oido Obsoleto (traditional jazz) and BLAU (music with winds and new technologies). Between 2014 and 2020 she was a stable clarinetist for the ceremonies of the Synagogue Amijai Community of Buenos Aires. In 2016, she began her filmmaking career as co-director and co-scriptwriter with Leandro Koch of a documentary feature film about klezmer and Yiddish culture in Buenos Aires and Eastern Europe. She premiered the film in 2023 in the Berlinale Film Festival and won the First Feature Award.

    https://www.nevadacine.com/es/adentro-mio-estoy-bailandohttps://nabisfilm.com/grid/released/

    In 2018 she created Cultura Klezmer, a project of preservation, network and learning spaces for Latinamerican Klezmer Musicians  https://www.instagram.com/culturaklezmerhttps://www.facebook.com/cultureklezmer

    Mirta Wons
    Laba Process/Project

    Mirta Wons is an Argentinian actress and singer. She studied in Jewish institutions since her childhood until graduating as a Teacher of Preescholar Education and postgraduate studies at Tel Aviv University. In 1985, out of curiosity, he began a musical comedy workshop and discovered her real vocation: acting. Since then, that is her passion, where he has travelled an extensive and varied path in theater, mostly musical comedies, and also on television series and Films. She participated in more than 100 television series. Some of them are: Violetta, Floricienta, Rebelde Way, A Year to Remember, Stolen Lives, Married with Children, Singing for a Dream, Time Doesn’t Stop, Malandras, Final Time, Triplets. In theater, (as actress and/or Singer): Julius Caesar, in Buenos Aires and in the  opening of the 68th International Classical Theater Festival of Mérida, Spain; Priscilla, the queen of the desert; Sound of Music, directed by Jonathan Butterell; Long day’s Journey into Night; Nine the Musical. Directed by: David Leveaux; Stan and Oliver.  Films: Los Justos; Atrevidas; Pendeja, Payasa y Gorda; Il ricchiamo, Italy; Puzzle; Lucky Luke, France; El boquete; Tri Mogli, Italy; El Amateur. Her teachers have been Hugo Midon, Carlos Gianni, Ricky Pashkus, Marcelo Velasco, Guillermo Ghio, Ricardo Bartis, Hector Malamud, Carla Scatarelli. She received the Podestá Award for Honorable Trajectory 2017 awarded by the Argentine Association of Actors and the National Senate. Argentinian Theater Critic Award as Best Actress in Nine the Musical.

    Miguel Rausch
    Laba Process/Project

    Miguel Rausch compses music for theatre and dance plays. He directs the project Fortissimo, in which he mixes classical music and electronics along with visual. He has written two symphonies, several string quartets, a Wind quintet, several trios for different ensambles, pieces for piano solo and for piano duos (with electronic music), a violin and viola duo (which is in the process of being arranged for Ensamble Sintonia, which will premiere it in 2020), among others.  In December, some of the string quartets will be premiered arranged for Brass Ensamble, and played by the Mengel Brothers Brass Quartet, in Buenos Aires.  Nowadays, he’s working on the composition of three different pieces: The opera Solaris (for which the Ibermusicas fund is requested), a Concert for Horn Violin and Orchestra Típica (tango), and a series of pieces called Quantum Meditations on Tunes We All Know, in which he explores the possibiliites or even the creative process that a melody could take before settling down to its final version, of which one is completed (for Contralto Clarinet, based on the Pink Panther Theme). He plays different non formal instruments, having written the first etudes for the Hidrórgano, and the Tubodroide, two instruments designed by Federico Joselevich Puiggros.  He played a set of tuned glasees for the work Twilight, by Jorge Macchi and Edgardo Rudnitzky.  He specializes in percussion with objects, having been de Director of ELEMENTAL, with which he staged two shows. Aside from orchestral music, he composes Klezmer and electronic music, as well.  Has developed quite an interesting career as an actor, too, working under the orders of some of the most prestigious Directors in Argentina. He was awarded in 2005 the Trinidad Guevara Prize for the music he wrote for the play Del Otro Lado del Mar, by Omar Pacheco, and in 2014 he was nominated for an ACE (Theatre Critics Association) for the music of the play El Gran Teatro Del Mundo, by Francisco Civit.

     

    María Gabriela Ini
    Laba Process/Project

    My name is María Gabriela Ini, I was born in Bs As in 1967. I have a degree in Anthropology from the University of Buenos Aires. (1992). I am an author and  secondary school teacher at Colegio Tarbut. My published works deal with issues such as family violence , incest, love, complex parent-child relationships (especially between mothers and daughters), fear,  the unspoken, and the forbidden.Publications:

    – Presas. Cartas de mujeres presas en el Asilo correccional de Mujeres de Buenos Aires (1939-1941). Investigación antropológica. Ediciones del Camino. Bs As. 2019.

    – Ofelia o el poema de la flor. Poesía. Ediciones del Camino. Colección Hojas de Hierba. Bs.As. Abril 2018.

    – El lugar más cálido. Novela. Ediciones del Camino. Buenos Aires. Abril 2017.

    – Reina Clitemnestra. Poesía. Ediciones Java la Terca!. Buenos Aires. Agosto 2014.

    – Bartolo se pinta solo. Madres, hijas y esposas: Tragedia y sátira de prensa durante la epidemia de fiebre amarilla de Buenos Aires de 1871. Ensayo. Beca Flora Tristán. Ediciones Biblioteca Nacional / Editorial Teseo. Buenos Aires. 2012. Ver entrevista Biblioteca Nacional, a propósito de Bartolo se pinta solo. https://youtu.be/JELkdkAwo54

    – Violeta clandestina. Poesía. Editorial Del Mármol-Izquierdo. Buenos Aires- Madrid. Octubre 2011.

    – Los Hiriácidas. Poesía. Editorial Alción. Córdoba. Enero 2007.

    – El Amor. Libro objeto. Buenos Aires. 2006.

    – La belleza. Libro objeto. Buenos Aires. 2003.

    – Ana M. 1945. Novela. Finalista del VIII Premio Planeta. 1999. Edición subsidiada por la Fundación Antorchas. (Subsidio a la Creación Artística. 2001). Ed. Beatriz Viterbo. Rosario. 2001.

    Leo Mayer
    Laba Process/Project

    Leo Mayer was born in 1982 in San Nicolás de los Arroyos, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has a degree in engineering, cultural management and visual arts production. He carried out a work clinic with Daniel Joglar, Claudio Roncoli and Beatriz Vignoli. He made individual exhibitions in the Red Zone – Rosario, at the Municipal Art Gallery – San Nicolás, at the Cultural Center of the National Library of Congress – Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires- and at The Casa del Acuerdo National Museum – San Nicolás, Argentina. In 2022 he participated in the Permanent Assembly, by Carla Barbero, at the Torcuato Di Tella University and in the collective exhibitions of the Sarmiento Historical Museum (C.A.B.A.) curated by Eduardo Stupía and Bithouse (Córdoba) curated by Siu Lisazo. In 2021 his works were selected for: IV Biennal de Válencia Ciutat Vella Oberta, XVI Salón de Artes Visuales de Junín, IV Biennal de Libro de Artista Museo Casa Carnacini. In addition, he obtained the scholarships: Cordillera -Chile- for the residence “Cauce”, ACE Foundation –Argentina – for the residence “Co-habitar fronteras”, Activar Patrimonio -Ministry of Culture of the Argentine Nation- and was selected by the International Biennial of Art of Curitiba – Brazil to disseminate his work along with that of twenty other artists. He published his first book `What the works leave us´ by ALMACÉN |arte contemporáneo edita| and wrote various articles for the Chilean digital magazine Diversas. He is a collaborator of art and culture in the Spanish magazine ArtyHum. He is currently Director of the gallery ALMACÉN |arte contemporáneo| and works as a management engineer in the company he has with his family. Precursors of his work are Daniel Joglar and Arthur Bispo do Rosario.

     

    Karina Lerman
    Laba Process/Project

    Karina Lerman, poet, psychoanalyst, Hebrew language teacher and university professor. Visual artist. He edited “The Daughters of Lot” by Griselda García Editora (2018) and in Mexico by Diván Negro editions (2022). “Pearls”, for The Garden of Delights (2022). Selected for the Anthology “How to say”, by Editorial Ruinas Circulares (2019). First mention of the Adolfo Bioy Casares prize (2019) with his poetry collection “Cayupán”. With the text “And you will narrate your children” through the Anne Frank Center in Argentina (2021). His text “Desmalvinizados” has been selected by the University of La Matanza (Argentina) to integrate an anthology (2023). Selected to integrate the anthology of the R. award. Reches, Circular Ruins (2023). He has participated in the poetry festival of the city of Fusagasugá (Colombia, 2022) dedicated to the support of indigenous peoples. Compiler of the digital Anthology “Enhebradas”, of a psychoanalytic poiesis in times of pandemic (2021), the Solidarity Anthology Women in Voice, “Of loves. heartbreak” (March 2022). The digital poetic anthology “Of losses and mourning. Cartography of the bodies” (2023) and “Seams of the word” (2023). LABA Scholarship (laboratory of Jewish art and culture in Buenos, 2023). Coordinates the cycle of readings in poetic dialogue “The flowers of Circe”. It gives workshops of networked readings and analysis of poetic texts. Write reviews and articles for literary and psychoanalytic media from Argentina and Latin American countries. It has been translated into Mapuzungun, Greek and Yiddish.

    Cecilia Romano
    Laba Process/Project

    Cecilia Romano studied Communication Media in highschool (ORT) and filmmaking at university (FUC). Assisted special fashion photography workshops dictated by Aldo Bressi, Andy Cherniavsky and Pablo Franco. She worked in short and long films as well as advertising films in the areas of art and costume direction both independantly and as an assitant to art director Marcelo Salvioli and Costumes director Giselle Peisojovich (1998-2005). She has worked as a photographer for digital and printed media such as La Nacion, Oh Lala Magazine, Luz Magazine, Look Magazine and Nueva Magazine. She currently works in advertising campaigns as a freeelance photographer for Argentinian brands travelling to Uruguay and Brasil as well. She collaborates in editorial projects specialized in culture. Explores music and has recorded a Jazz and Bossa Nova album (2006)

    She has trained in Astrology and Tarot and since 2021 develops a project known as “Astro Portrait” where she combines portrait photography with astrological counceling as a method where both tecniques blend to get closer to self knowledge. She Directs ABRE HOLISTICA, a practice space for holistic healing workshops, meditation and yoga practice

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