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Paper short abstract

Sucúa Haven is a collaborative project exploring the Ecuadorian diaspora’s sense of belonging in Greater New Haven through multimodal methods. This paper examines circulation as central to its multimodality, highlighting its potential across contexts while questioning its possibilities and limits.

Paper long abstract

Sucúa Haven is a research-creation project that explores notions of belonging among Ecuadorians in New Haven, Connecticut (US). Its name originates from Sucúa, a city in the Ecuadorian Amazon where many collaborators originate.

Using interviews, performative ethnographic methods through staged photography, and photo-elicitation, the project represents, reinhabits, and reimagines the memories, dreams, and alternative lives of its participants. It investigates how this community navigates belonging and isolation through translocal and transtemporal experiences and imaginaries. The resulting collection of short stories creates a portrait of Sucúa Haven—a territory that is both the US and Ecuador.

Through its multimodal approach, the project positions imagination, through memories and fictions, as central dimensions for understanding migrant experiences. It moves beyond material realities to examine less-explored aspects such as affect, longing, and desire.

This paper critically reflects on the methodologies employed and their complementarity, with a focus on the circulation of its outputs across diverse spaces. These include academic institutions like Yale (US) and FLACSO (Ecuador), photographic publications, and community-oriented venues such as a popular restaurant in downtown New Haven and the Communal Hall in Sucúa, Ecuador. By centering circulation as a key element of multimodality, the project highlights its democratizing potential and ability to foster dialogue, address diverse audiences and move audiences across these contexts. Finally, the paper questions the sufficiency of these actions and asks: In what other ways could this project transcend into more tangible, actionable outcomes?

https://www.vanessa-teran.com/main-labs-1