blackout | D9 ELMCIP

FBI special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month long investigation of whether President Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 Presentential elections. When the report of his findings was released to the public, significant portions were blacked out. The full report is 448 pages long. In total, approximately 7.25% of the text or 1 in 8 lines were redacted, with most of the censored text concentrated in the sections on Russian Hacking and Dumping Operations (Source: Washinton Post, Vox).

To create "In Denial," Holeton selected pages from the table of contents and the introduction and executive summary of Volume II of the report, the section which concerns obstruction of justice. About 80% of the document has been "further" blacked out. The remaining visible text describes lewd sexual acts, mostly involving Trump's rear-end. There are two versions of the poem: a 30-page version with the blacked-out sections included and a 6-page text-only version. In the latter, the censored parts are removed, so that the text appears without spaces or breaks; this version was also edited for punctuation and capitalization (Source: the Fictious Press: Select Web Publications by Richard Holeton).

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Read more about In Denial: a Further Redaction of the Mueller Report

Abstract (in English)

The Convergence between Print and Digital Literature in Blackout Poetry study the phenomenon of the “blackout poetry” both in the digital and the physical world. According to Ralph Heibutzki, on Demand Media, “Blackout Poetry focuses on reordering words to create a different meaning. Also known as the newspaper blackout poetry, in it, the author uses a permanent marker to cross out or delete words or images that he sees as unnecessary or irrelevant to the effect he is trying to create. The central idea is to design a new text from the words and images published previously, but finally, the reader is free to interpret as he wants.”