PETER DELPEUT

Dear Andrea, Aryan, Jurgen and Martijn,

First of all, thanks for the wonderful job on the three chapters of The Forgotten Evil. I see this as the herri-version, as if edited and designed for your web-magazine. It is exactly what I hoped for, with intelligent interventions in editing on content level and provocatively enhancing the content through design.

There are five ingredients I want to comment on. First in general, and later to substantiate my proposals for a herri version 2 of the three chapters.

Background
Probably in my eyes the most spectacular intervention. What interest me most is that it influences the reading of the text and also the interpretation of the text on an almost unconscious level. It is there as a background that enforces a certain kind of reading of the text.

Photo’s
You could see these as illustrations of course, that would be the classical use of them. But the typical herri intervention plays with this. They work the best when they are not chosen as one to one illustrations, but as some sort of extra layer of the text. In this pilot there are some extremely strong examples of this, on a level I hadn’t imagined myself.

Filmclips
In herri design these are mostly illustrative clips, that is to say: they take the reader out of the text to mostly longer excursions. At best they create a parallel story line. When they come directly from the Internet, they create also an important distraction from the text, as they lure the ‘reader’ into the algorithms of the Internet (which are personal, or at least connected to the history of the used computer).
Attractive in this is that they start a free floating journey, initiated by the text and the chosen clip. Disturbing for me as a writer is that I am not anymore at the steering wheel of the reception of my text.

Internet links
The links bring the reader without visual seduction directly to the informational content connected to the ‘word, ‘name’, or ‘concept’ that is highlighted. They are the most informational intrerventions, more or less on the level of a footnote in a text.
Also here the distraction of the algorithms of the Internet once the link is used.

Text quotes
These are inspired by the use of these in traditional magazines or papers, where they mostly function as teasers: to tease the reader into the text. The simple use of these can suggest a kind of readers digest of the text (I have to admit, there are some magazines that I read solely through these text captions.) But in herri-style they can be very effective when used as a counterpoint, as some kind of comment, or as a means to (over)stress certain content, like an exclamation mark .

Text size
Although maybe the easiest of interventions, I was surprised how effective this intervention can be. It is an intervention most publishers would be hesitative of in using in books or magazines, but in this digital and visual presentation of the essay it works spectacular subtle.

In this herri version 1 and in your Internet magazine, you use all these possibilities more or less at liberty, commuting easily from one possibility to another, sometimes opening the Internet to the reader, sometimes in a hidden way manipulating the reader towards certain ideas or interpretations. This is highly attractive.

BUT I DREAM OF BRINGING THIS CONCEPT ONE STEP CLOSER TO THE LINEARITY OF THE CLASSICAL BOOK OR FILM RECEPTION. AND IN THE FUTURE BRINGING IT TWO STEPS CLOSER.

Let me make this clear.

I would like to research the possibilities as a writer/director of being more on the steering wheel of the reader’s trajectory. That is to say that I want to direct the real reading/screening time of the reader, comparable with the linearity of the text of a book or a film. And at the same time using all the visual liberties of the website design, enhanced by the atmospheric use of background, photo’s, text size etc.

In version 2 we could give this a try with the existing text as it is now.

But I dream of a version in which we can rewrite the text and re-edit the clips in a way that there will be a result that can only exist as a digital version: to be read and seen in one flow. This version 3 is not within our reach now. But with an interesting version 2 I hope to interest the Dutch Literary Fund to give us the possibility to work on that (with of course the realistic funding all this work needs).

Let me be clear that for this version 2 I needed your version 1. It is more or less as how I work with editors for my films, giving them much liberty to find out what is in the material that I didn’t see myself. And through this to enrich the material with interventions I couldn’t imagine myself.

The Forgotten Evil herri version 2

From here I will comment more directly on version 1 and give in red my practical proposals. These are mainly directed towards a more linear and less free floating version, also to try to keep the distractions of the Internet out.

I am not acquainted with the technical demands of my proposals! So when these are not within reach of the limited budget we are working with, please let me know – we will keep them for the dream of version 3. So see this also as a proposal to make me understand the limits of a project like this.

To start with a very banal proposal you would make me happy to change the titles of the three pages/chapters.

Peter Delpeut I > The Forgotten Evil pilot chapter 5

Peter Delpeut II > The Forgotten Evil pilot chapter 9

Peter Delpeut III > The Forgotten Evil pilot chapter 11

I will write an introductory text to this pilot for the opening page, explaining the original essay and the pilot of three chapters.

As I also want to make presentations about this pilot it is extremely important to keep access to version 1, to show the trajectory of the research.

And then also in general: can we block the redirection of YouTube and Vimeo clips to other films and/or websites?

Comments Peter Delpeut 1

Background. The choice of the background poses problems.
* Now the drone shots of Auschwitz bring the reader/viewer first of all to the last paragraphs of the text. Which is my story of visiting Auschwitz.
* It also brings the reader/viewer in the trope of the Holocaust, albeit a rather special one, that of the extermination camps. This trope is problematic, as it has overshadowed the reality of the extermination of the Jews in the Baltic States. There are several historians (also referred to in the essay) that criticize this narrowing of the Holocaust to the extermination camps, as it tends to forget that before these camps there was already an extremely cruel chapter of the genocide in the Eastern European countries where most Jews were killed one by one with a gunshot in the neck.
* It made me clear this question: Is the background bringing the reader into my head or in Mekas’s head? And what is it what I want? It is quiet interesting that the choice for the two photo close ups of Mekas face (selfies avant la lettre) direct the reader to Mekas’s head – which I see as an extraordinary smart intervention. Of course it is possible to give several different signals, but it also brought me to another idea.

To me it is important to create an image in which we understand that this charismatic person of Mekas is a ‘war child’, a person branded by war.

Proposal: in the background the last ten minutes from Germania Anno Zero from Rossellini, in which a young boy wanders through a ravaged Berlin and finally commits suicide.
I can send a .mkv file of the film, in which the last part starts from 01.03.52.
On YouTube you find the scene of poor visual quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBnICml1eec
The whole film in reasonable quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsVq2agpZoA
But I prefer the file, without the possibility of being redirected further on the Internet!

I was wondering if it is possible to change the background once the reader/veiwer has reached a certain point.
So my question is: Can you edit the background?

More concretely, can you move from Germania Anno Zero to the Auschwitz images once the reader reaches the point in the text: ‘Some forty years ago…?????

That is to say, I am not completely convinced with the drone shots of Auschwitz. You could read them as ‘guilty landscape’, which I thinks works.
But when you play them as a short film, there is this horrible music, sentimentalizing the images.

So when we keep this film, we should make it silent.

But there is a much more interesting film: Austerlitz by Sergej Loznitsa. This film shows the camp as the touristic attraction which it is now.

Trailer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbhi6rBxTgU

I couldn’t find longer excerpts yet, but I will try. There is a streaming of the film

Photo’s

A more general question on information about photos. They have no captions now. I find this attractive, as they go with the flow of the text now: as a comment, as a teaser, etc. The same counts for the interventions on Caspar’s PhD.

I will try to check with future proofreaders if they want also the hard information on the visuals. Or to see if we can hide that somewhere, but to find for the footnote enthusiasts (of which I am myself one example.)

I think the photo’s in this chapter are very well chosen and placed.

I hesitate with the photo of Herman de Man and the book sleeve of Rising Waters. They feel like one to one illustrations, not bringing further the general subject of the whole essay.

My suggestion: skip these two photo’s and let’s see or we can go along without them.

I am also wondering why there is no photo of Casper. Was this a conscious choice?
At the moment it feels like an interesting choice.

Comments Peter II

What I like is the playing with the text size of certain quotes.

What I like is the use of both Google Earth visuals.

I am wondering if it is possible to place a link under the yellow pin, which brings the user/reader in the typical GE-flight to the place in GE.
I am aware this takes the reader also out the essay into another program, but maybe this wandering can also be directed by us in a later stage. What can Google Street View add?
Let’s not worry to much about this for now.

I think the use of close up photos of Mekas and text stills from his films is an extremely challenging intervention. This creates a strong parallel line of the text that challenges it, makes you think about Mekas and later on Casper, and works on an unconscious level like the background intervention in Peter Delpeut I.

Film clips
In this chapter my comments are mainly on the use of film clips. They are now used mainly as illustrations of the written text, giving context to the citations.
When used like this, my only comment would be to place short black breaks between the several cuts that has been made in the originals. It is like using “…” or […] in written quotes, and a matter of honesty towards the original films. I think we should do this also in a presentation like this.

Besides this and more important, the clips are now long and don’t function as an integral part of the on-going essay. They are more or less parallel stories now, for the reader who wants to dig further in the subject. This is the typical website magazine possibility.

But in version 2 I would like to move already a little further towards making the clips an integral part of the essay, to be seen in the flow of reading/viewing the essay.
This would mean a very precise editing in a final version, but we can give it a go now with my still rather rude proposals.

So I will suggest shortening the clips as they are now, and I use the timing of the clips as they are now.

Mekas Clip 1
Use from 26.17 Were you ever in the Astravas forrest? etc.
(In version 3 we could play much more precise with the clips.)

Mekas clip 2
No change.

Gureckas clip 1
No change.

Gureckas clip 2
From 11.54 (toast on free Lithuania) till the end

Gureckas clip 3
From 1.57 till the end

Gureckas clip 4
From 8.42 till the end

Photos

Maybe there is an abundance of Mekas close-ups now. They work accusational. The text stills are also already having the same effect.

I would be very curious to see what photos from people from Biržai could do with the last part of the text.

See: History of Biržai (open access), visual materials of photos I mention in the text.

Maybe it would be best to make them smaller than how you use now the other illustrations. Probably all of them are killed by the Nazi’s and their Lithuanian accomplices.

Comments Peter III

I tend to take a more liberal approach towards this chapter, which probably has tot do with the subject of Fluxus. The background of Lost, Lost, Lost works strong.

I like very much the textual quotes projected on the image of the mother.

I like the broad design of the trailer ofThe Story of George. It has an overwhelming effect, and it makes the clip also more an integral part of the text.

(Which is something to remember, and could be an idea for the USHMM clips of Mekas and Gureckas, which make them less ‘illustrations’.)

I would like to skip two long clips, that work now as a contextual illustration:
The Misfits
Lost, Lost, Lost
I realise I have sent you the wrong clip of The Angry Dog performance!
It should be: The Angry Dog: https://vimeo.com/266407766

And I would like to use two quotes, probably not in one clip, but in two separate clips
* From 17.21 to 20.44 about the angry dog

* 32.19 to 34.00 quote about forgetting
And two steer the flow, I think I would replace The Shed after the paragraph, as it can serve as a nice and moving closure of this part of the chapter.
The photo with quote ‘it all happenend etc.’ can serve as an opening of the second part of the chapter.