The Rivers of Babylon

June 9, 2015 Lab 1.0 by Meryll Page

 Is water a memory trigger for you?  That was the discussion question for Lab 1.0 during the June 9^th session.  We analyzed Psalm 137—“By the waters of Babylon, There we sat and we wept as we remembered Tzion.”  As opposed to our personal experiences remembering by a body of water, this psalm is a collective memory that preserves the profound sadness and anger of the Israelite exiles post 586 BCE. The harsh ending of the psalm led to an emotional discussion of art as a process of confronting sadness and anger in our own lives. 

Liba continued Meryll’s text lesson with an invitation to the participants to write about memories of a specific body of water.  One word of those memories was transferred to paper to add to Camille Gage’s work, I am Water—an interactive public artwork that challenges viewers to consider their relationship to the Earth’s water resources.  All contributed to the river of images and words begun in the previous lab which will be part of our exhibit.