| Photo by S. Beth Atkin |
Gilles Peress Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by S. Beth Atkin |
Page 7 of 8
Tell us about your current work. You're doing a book on Northern Ireland and also some work in the Middle East.
Yes. Right now I'm putting together a book about Northern Ireland. It's a project I started 25 years ago and it's about this 25-year period. It's almost like a fictional diary. It's about memory and history again in the form of a fictional diary. It's about the simultaneity of life on different sides of a divide, and also on different sides of a class divide, which is also very powerful.
I'm also putting together this project about the process, the path to peace in Bosnia. Because I was really fascinated with the notion that once everybody says, "Yeah, it's peace ... Dayton" -- everybody has this rosy notion that "Well, it's fine. They're fine. No problem." Well peace is a very complicated and troublesome affair. It's very messy, it's not clear. And there's a real notion also of hangover. It's like the day after the party, you've trashed the house and you have to look carefully, and you can see in detail what has been the nature of war. So it's a project I'm putting together. And I'm starting to shoot in the Middle East, yes.
On the peace process, will there be more text?
Yes, actually I think I'm going to do this one more in a film form.
So actually make a film or a video?
No, no it's going to be a book. But it will be in a film narrative form.
I see. And the work you're doing in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, you're looking at particular sites over time?
It's unfortunate that I cannot be in Hebron right now. But I work on one street corner in Hebron over a period of time.
To watch what's going on?
I don't know. Sometimes one functions by intuition and I want to see what comes out of that.
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