The Telenovela Archives: The Early Years – an Exercise on Visual Archaeology
The project has the structure of an open archive, it is an evolving collection of visual records–knowledge and memories–that will illustrate the huge impact that television, and more specifically serialized fiction, had in the political, social, and cultural history of Latin America during the 1950s and 1960s. It is also a storytelling exercise: it will present the authors, the work that they created, and the circumstances surrounding its production and dissemination, in a way that will allow the audience to identify cause-effect connections, and to understand the ‘telenovela’ phenomenon (the Latin American version of the North American and British soap-operas), in a historical context.
The project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (Explore and Create Program), and the London Arts Council (Community Arts Investment Program) and involves collaboration with archives in the US, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil.
