~ Poet: Jan Baeke ~

Speech by the Leader on the Occasion of the Future by Jan Baeke and Public Thought

On 5 January, 2025 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Videopoems
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This 2020 videopoem by Public Thought with its lyrical and absurdist send-up of political discourse seemed like an excellent way to kick off the New Year. Dutch poet Jan Baeke and designer and media artist Alfred Marseille note in their description at Vimeo:

SPEECH BY THE LEADER ON THE OCCASION OF THE FUTURE presents images of speaking leaders in an outside world that ignores those images, along with the language and tone of political speeches and their poetic disruption in slogans and subtitles.

See the full text on the Public Thought website. From the notes:

Fragments and paraphrases in the text originating from the New Years Address to the Nation by Vladimir Putin, delivered on 31 December 2019, Tayyip Erdogan’s message on hanukkah, M.J. Cagumbay Tumamac’s poem “A Planned Brief Documentary on a Teenage Boy in a Badjao Village”, Bùi Chát’s poem “April”, Anne Carson’s “TV Men: Artaud”, and Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s essay “Shock and Blah: Offensive Postures in ‘Conceptual’ Poetry and the Traumatic Sublime”.

Audio and video fragments originating from the annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly, by Vladimir Putin, delivered on 20 February 2019, the 2020 New Year’s speech by Xi Jinping, Speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – Democracy and Martyrs Rally, 8 August 2016, Speech by Kim Jong-un at the Inter-Korean summit, 19 September 2018, televised speech by Kim Jong-un, 1 January 2018, Boris Johnsons’s speech: “I share the optimism of President Trump”, 3 February 2020, Donald Trump Memorial Day speech at Fort McHenry, 25 May 2020, Victor Orban at government news conference, 10 January 2019.

At the border by Jan Baeke

On 3 February, 2017 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This videopoem from Public Thought, the collaborative team of Dutch poet Jan Baeke and designer and media artist Alfred Marseille, was screened at ZEBRA 2016. Completed last July, it is sadly more relevant than ever: a “Poetic reflection on the ambiguities of the refugee crisis, media coverage, extremist propaganda and EU politics,” as Baeke and Marseille describe it. (Click through for the text.)

What we had has not yet been by Jan Baeke

On 28 December, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Another one of the Public Thought collaborations between Dutch poet Jan Baeke and media artist Alfred Marseille. Let me quote the description at Vimeo in full:

Originally conceived as an interactive installation for the 2007 Literature and New Media project in the Waag, Amsterdam, this production by Jan Baeke and Alfred Marseille mixes poetry, moving images and sound in a movie directed by words, and talks about memory, longing, the misguided monologue and the meaning of the kitchen in modern society.
Images and sounds are mainly drawn from the Prelinger archives.
This version is an entirely new edit made for the 2011 Beijing Book Fair and also featured at the 2011 Noorderzon festival in Groningen (Netherlands).
Text: Jan Baeke
Editing: Alfred Marseille
English translation: Willem Groenewegen

(The Waag, incidentally, is an old city gate and guild hall, “the oldest remaining non-religious building in Amsterdam.”)

There’s also a version in Mandarin Chinese.

Rue des Abeilles and No Other Way by Jan Baeke

On 11 December, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This is Rue des Abeilles, part of an on-going collaboration between poet Jan Baeke and media artist Alfred Marseille that they call Public Thought: “Cinépoèmes – data poems – moving shorts – speculative analysis.” This was screened at the 2012 ZEBRA Poetry Festival (to whose Vimeo “likes” I’m indebted for the find). In the credits, “Idea & screenplay” are attributed to both Baeke and Marseille, while Marseille alone handled production, editing and sound. The English translation is by Willem Groenewegen.

I was especially struck by the myriad ways in which motion and energy were coaxed from still images and kinetic type animation (even to the point of making the word “motionless” pulse and tremble). The description at Vimeo reads:

One summer morning at dawn in a French town, sleepless and without a clue. Everything was breathing…

Short film based on two poems by Jan Baeke, Rue des Abeilles and No other way (10).
(first revision)

Thomas Möhlmann’s bio of Jan Baeke on Poetry International Web makes it clear that film has been a crucial influence on his work:

Besides being a poet and translator, Jan Baeke works for the Amsterdam Film Museum. In a note to his fourth collection, Groter dan de feiten (Larger than the Facts, 2007), he lists a number of people who inspired him during his writing process. This list shows that the work of international film makers such as Andrej Tarkovski, Federico Fellini, Michael Haneke and Luis Buñuel are as important to Baeke’s poetry as writing of poets like János Pilinszky, Wallace Stevens and Anne Carson. Both Baeke’s imagery and technique seem to be fuelled and formed by film and poetry alike.

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