Une Valise Transféministe

“Une Valise Transféministe” is an ensemble composed of different suitcases, books and a film.

The film brings the books to the screen. Between a portable library and transition kit, “Une Valise Transféministe” gathers photographic excerpts of feminist, lesbian, queer, anarcho-libertarian, and trans texts. A visual representation of shared reading, the film poses (and seeks to give one possible answer to) the question of how text and books can be exhibited. From the underlined sentences, highlighted passages and footnotes of references marked for further study, a portrait of a reader—or several readers—emerges, as well as a powerful legacy of feminist and transfeminist thought.

All the texts depicted in the film recur as physical books in the three suitcases summarily entitled “Une Valise Transféministe“. The three used suitcases are filled with sets of books from different eras—one with books published before 1900, another with works dating to 1900-2000, and a third with publications since 2000—and come to represent epochs of feminist and transfeminist thought. Among the books are novels, memoirs, historical and political treatises, philosophical tracts, manifestos and theoretical essay, classic and foundational feminist and transfeminist texts, on topics that include, among others, class and race relations, colonialism, suffrage, the rights of women, human and nonhuman animals, gender and sexuality, and love.