Voice to Vision

Voice to Vision is a fifteen year old collaborative art project started by Art Professor David Feinberg and, former chair of the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, Stephen Feinstein, of the University of Minnesota.

Voice to Vision

“The Voice to Vision collaborative project captures the extraordinary experiences of genocide survivors from different parts of the world. The stories are first shared through dialogue and then transformed into works of visual art that display painting, drawing, collage, and mixed media. Each art piece has been created through collaboration with a team of artists, and genocide survivors as the storytellers share their experiences, members of the collaborative team exchange ideas and make creative decisions together to produce a work of art that reflects the convergence of each voice involved in the project. The collaboration process is video-documented and edited so that various communities and generations can experience it. The documentaries feature original scores that have been composed by collaborating musicians to reflect the survivor’s stories and sequence the video timeline. The videos are also housed in the UMN library conservancy. It is the goal of the Voice to Vision project to inspire others to use the tools of dialogue and the visual arts to investigate, recover, and protect their original narrative and emotional experiences. The art pieces and the video documentaries can connect audiences to some very life-changing moments in history and stimulate discussion and education at public showings, in classrooms, and family settings.

Founder, Professor David Feinberg, and co-Directors Beth Andrews and J. Wren Supak lead this project. It is developed through the collaboration of an interdisciplinary visual research team that includes participants from the Department of Art and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, as well as participants from the surrounding Twin Cities communities.”