APPLICATION FOR THE 2014-2015 LABA HOUSE OF STUDY

“Explosion 1960” (2011) by Yael Kanarek, Courtesy of Bitforms Gallery

We are now accepting applications for 2014-15 fellows to take part in LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture. We are looking for culture-makers from any creative field who are interested in studying ancient Jewish texts in an open-minded setting and seeking inspiration in these texts for their work. LABA Fellows create work for our LABAlive series and our online journal. Apply HERE. Deadline is 5/12/14.

The theme of LABA 2014-15 is TIME.

Time is transparent yet ever-present, a source of comfort and fear and the hidden link between matter and spirit. Next year we will explore the many manifestations of this concept through a variety of ancient Jewish texts including the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash as well as later mystical teachings from the book of Zohar and other Kabbalistic and Hassidic sources.

We will study time’s ethics and aesthetics, its social and individual cycles, its presence in our body, our physical environment and our community. We will read descriptions of the time before time, and speculations about the time after time ends. We will entertain the notion of sacred time as well as the possibility of profane time. We will look at the structure of time, and how it resists such constraints. And, above all, we will have a great time studying, drinking and creating art together — in the lush, fertile and free-flowing, romantic, super-serious and endlessly playful environment of the LABA House of Study.