With and Against the Archive: Building a Decolonial Collective in Morocco

Framed by my film “How to reverse a spell: the promise of an archive”, a speculative triptych that traverses the disappearance, erasure, and commodification of Moroccan public archives and their colonial displacement, this article traces the formation of a collective of artists writing a manifesto to decolonize Moroccan archives. In July 2023, 10 Moroccan artists and cultural workers convened to think together and build processes that welcome vulnerability, empathy, and kinship, where archive is held in all its emotional attachment and embodied presence. Beginning with personal experiences, the group engaged with filmic representations, collectives’ work from Sudan and Portugal, and legal texts before drafting a manifesto in three languages proposing policy changes, calling for restitution, and opening public institutions to community archival methods. This 3-day gathering bridged academic, archival, and artistic spaces, sharing methods of screaming and dreaming within archival re-activation.