Albrecht Becker autoportrait courtesy of Hervé Joseph Lebrun collection

Queer and trans testimonies: from the Holocaust to 2023

Wed 22 November 2023

Pembroke Collge

The Holocaust is not immune to canonisation, as scholars such as Dominick LaCapra have pointed out, and some testimonies are regularly excluded from the official conversation. Artistic and literary practices attest to processes of exclusion and violence and give voice to those that experience them. In this spirit, filmmakers Matteo Botrugno and Daniele Coluccini have strived in their latest work, C’è un soffio di vita soltanto, to amplify the voice of Lucy Salani, a trans woman who survived Dachau; in France, photographer and filmmaker Hervé Joseph Lebrun has worked with Pierre Seel to interrogate processes of invisibilisation and visibilisation. In these ways, these artists set up forms of subversion and resistance to normative canonised narratives. The event seeks to bring to the fore such marginalised and non-conforming voices, from those of Holocaust survivors to that of contemporary artists.

Homophobia, queerphobia and transphobia did not end with the Second World War. Their spatio-temporal extension to the present and across national boundaries necessitates that we work across disciplinary boundaries and without the confines of academia.

The two-day event will begin with the UK premiere of Botrugno and Coluccini’s critically acclaimed C’è un soffio di vita soltanto, which tells the story of Dachau survivor Lucy Salani.

On the second day, a panel of academics from different fields will explore questions of testimony; a roundtable will then bring together discussants from inside and outside academia, for a conversation that crosses national borders.