Imagination and Collective Memory: Mind-maps and Personal Recollections of a Landscape

Join Bloedel Reserve Creative Resident Alexa Luborsky in creating a communal Bloedel Reserve “Memory Book”. Alexa will be using the Armenian Houshamadyan and Jewish Yizker-bikher as examples. These books are moveable, fluid memorials that recollect a physical location of a homeland. Community projects, created by survivors, they were meant to invite collective memorialization of a lost town in the wake of their displacement.

This special interactive workshop will focus on the first portion of these books, which involve mid-maps and personal recollections of landscape. Participants will have the option to contribute to the Bloedel Reserve “Memory Book” via a drawn map and/or a written account of their experience of an area on the Reserve. We will explore connections that allow us move beyond just the physical space of the Reserve, and into a collective understanding of place as a location of potential for connection, community, and survival. After the conclusion of the workshop, the pages we created will be bound and everyone will receive a scan of this collectively created monument.

Come prepared for weather, as this workshop will take place both inside the Japanese Guest House and outside on the grounds.

WHERE

Meet at the Japanese Guest House

WHEN

January 22, 10:30 AM – 12:30 PM

COST

Free for Members but need to reserve a ticket
Included with admission for Non-Members but need to reserve a ticket

Not a member yet? Join here

Image:

Mind-map  titled “Kharberd Daghtin Kartegy” or, roughly translated, “Kharberd Field Map,” and shows the Oul Ova of the Kharberd Valley, drawn by Manoog B. Dzeron in the “Village of Parchanj” houshamadyan, first edition in 1938, and appearing just after the following dedication: “From the village sons and daughters burning with longing, to MOTHER PARCHANJ and to the generations that are and that will follow.”