STATEMENT

 

Witness Collaborative is a long-term project conceived by interdisciplinary artist, Alexandru Salceanu. It engages refugee and immigrant communities in the creation of process-oriented autobiographical video portraits. Throughout the creative process, participants tell their own stories, take part in editing their narratives, and have agency over their representation.

 

The conceptual foundation for Witness Collaborative emerged from the artist’s personal experience of listening to his Romanian mother and Filipina mother-in-law recount memories of “back home.” The healing impact of revisiting Alexandru’s own immigration story with his mother, and the urgency of preserving his mother-in-law’s memories following a terminal diagnosis, underscored the project’s importance.

 

Witness Collaborative investigates the quiet characteristics of resilience and dignity, power and joy present within pervasive cycles of struggle. It complicates narratives by providing the human experience to otherwise abstract ideas, and presents a visual platform for viewers to reflect on questions surrounding immigration. This project affirms individual experiences, preserves family histories, serves as a historical record, and sparks dialogue in this uncertain time.

 

The project pushes the boundaries of photography, documentary work, and social practice by dismantling traditional power dynamics of the camera through a shared creative process. It emphasizes collaboration in both the audio narrative and vertical visual composition. During filming, participants listen to their own stories, which can be a powerful act of remembering, affirming and claiming both the circumstances of their lives, and the courageous choices to persist and begin again.

 

Accessibility and democratization are central to the project’s distribution. Witness Collaborative reaches audiences through immersive installation exhibitions, large-scale public projections, and a dedicated website. The website will also host a tutorial enabling others to create and submit video portraits independently, expanding the archive into a living, community-generated resource. This digital platform serves as an open visual and oral history of immigrant experiences, available to immigrant communities, researchers, and the public.

 

If you have an immigration story that you would like to share, or if you’d like to support Alexandru in his work, please write to witnesscollaborative@gmail.com.

PARTNERS

 

This project would not be possible without the generous support of our funders, whose contributions we gratefully acknowledge. The Witness Collaborative was awarded the San Francisco Artist Grant and the Puffin Foundation Grant. Independent Arts and Media fiscally sponsors the project. Please consider giving by accessing the support page.