“They Lack Imagination…” ─ Valérie Wilson and Trans Life in the Audiovisual Archive

Trans people have always been represented in audiovisual media, yet the archiving practices of institutions and the creative choices of media producers have often obscured non-sensationalised appearances. The 1973 French TV program Chutes on tourne featured an interview with trans actress Valérie Wilson, but the footage held by the Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA) remains largely unseen. In order to highlight these obscurations and to speculatively fill in the blanks of Wilson’s life, this interview with Wilson is critically centred in our article. The authors – a trans history scholar and a trans visual artist – create a written and drawn fabulation on post-war transfeminine life from the interview, a ‘forensic practice’ (Hal Foster) that is structured as much by visual presence as well as material absence.