Ken. To be destroyed

This installation includes new work from the ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ project. This work was produced using a combination of analogue and digital processes.

'Ken. To be destroyed' arises out of a family secret - that Davidmann’s uncle Ken (K) was trans*. The family attempted to erase this from history and the family photograph album depicts K as male.

In 2011 Davidmann found a collection of family letters and documents about K being trans* in envelopes labelled “to be destroyed”. At the same time, she came across a set of K and Hazel’s wedding ‘proofs’. Looking at the photographs and letters together it seemed to Davidmann that in one hand she was holding an emblem of what in the case of trans* people a conventional family album allowed – the erasure of the trans* life - and in the other evidence of the experiences that would have been erased.
Without Davidmann’s involvement the family would have expunged the fact that there was a trans* family member. Using letters, photographs and photographic processes Davidmann tells the story that is missing from K and Hazel’s wedding photographs. In this work she is holding a ‘conversation’ with the family album, queering it, and returning a new version of the story to the family history.

See also
http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7963/,
http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7144/,
http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9168/

This screening of 'Ken. To be destroyed' took place as part of LGBT History Month 2015 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London.

As part of the V&A’s 'Queer and Now' Friday Late programme (27/02/2015), Sara Davidmann discussed her work whilst in conversation with queer theorist and author Prof. Judith (Jack) Halberstam. Their recent collaborative project and Davidmann’s work 'Ken. To be destroyed', are both quests for lost histories that cannot be recreated – a joint study in destruction, disappearance and desire. Images were screened from 'The Afterlife of the Kindertransport' and from 'Ken. To be destroyed'.

Ahmed Atteya also screened the film 'To be destroyed' on the making of 'Ken. To be destroyed' as part of the BFI Flare Film Festival, in the Lydia and Manfred Gorvy Lecture Theatre, V&A (29/02/2015).

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