‘Angélica la palenquera’: Collective Memory and a Decolonial Reimagining of Archival Futures

This paper examines the intersection between audiovisual archives and collective memory through a renewed approach to Yuruparí: Traditional Popular Art, a Colombian state documentary television series, focusing on the episode Angélica la palenquera (Gloria Triana and Jorge Ruiz, 1984). Developed in collaboration with the Kuchá Suto Communications Collective in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, the project involved the screening of the restored episode followed by a collective cataloging process. At its core lay a dialogue among local historians, musicians, and community leaders of different ages, allowing memories to nuance and reshape the historically imposed archival narratives on the communities. The project aims to broaden the categories and naming practices used by the archives that safeguard the Yuruparí collection, foregrounding the communities represented in the images and sounds in order to reclaim agency over the archives’ future. By proposing participatory approaches, it highlights broadcast archives as sites of creative engagement capable of challenging power dynamics of representation. Collaborative methodologies foster an ethical and dynamic form of access, grounded in ethnographic and qualitative systematization, while offering a framework for potential decolonial archival practices.