I suppose it’s inevitable that a poem siphoned from an infamous antisemitic text, written by a Jewish writer, and published by a Jewish press would be characterized as a Jewish book. And PROTOCOLS: An Erasure is that, but moreover, it’s a book about what power is and what it might be. To make this erasure poem, I removed words from the source text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in order to shift its focus from oppressive power to a type of power you and I already possess—“the mesh of all of us”—a power which upholds civil kindness and connection.
This film interpretation was made several years ago, when I was still writing the book. The relentless repetition of the word “power” in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had already made quite obvious the text’s main intention: to reveal the (fictional) hidden workings of power, thereby bestowing upon the reader that previously hidden power, along with a false sense of control.
While most people I know haven’t read the source text and would not choose to do so, I see this dangerous version of power happening a lot lately. Our world is confusing and scary. The kind of power that uses hatred to secure control is a tempting source of solace in an overwhelming world, providing a seemingly stable place amid the incessant tumble.
The images in this film are drawn from old scientific educational videos. My lifelong love of science is accompanied by a distrust of its attraction to certainty and control, a dialectic that’s visible in this work. The wild animals, seeds, plants, planets, and water in this film are all types of bodies, each “an education in deviation,” an invitation to swerve away from certainty and toward a version of hope that’s seed-like, full of a form of inherent power predicated on change, uncertainty, and openness: “the fact of the root and the brain of light.” We do not know what our world can be—and this is the version of power I believe our world most needs “to help dreams change form.”
Daniela Naomi Molnar is a poet, artist, and writer who creates with color, water, language, and place. Her debut book, CHORUS, won the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Poetry and was selected by Kazim Ali as the winner of Omnidawn Press’s 1st/2nd Book Award. Her paintings are created with pigments she makes from plants, bones, stones, rainwater, and glacial melt. Forthcoming books include Memory of a Larger Mind (Omnidawn, 2028) and Light / Remains (Bored Wolves Press, 2026). Her book-length poem “Memory of a Larger Mind” accompanies photographs by Julian Stettler in The Glacier Is a Being (Sturm & Drang, 2023). Her work is anthologized in Attached to the Living World: A New Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2025) and in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology from the Laurel Review. Molnar lives in Portland, Oregon and in the high deserts of the North American West.
www.danielamolnar.com / Instagram: @daniela_naomi_molnar