orbita

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«Орбита» – это коллектив поэтов, фотографов, художников и музыкантов, основанный Александром Заполем, Владимиром Лейбгамом, Артуром Пунте, Владимиром Светловым, Сергеем Тимофеевым и Жоржем Уалликом в 1999 году. Их свела вместе идея общего издания, которая, реализовавшись в нескольких выпусках альманаха «Орбита», привела к созданию собственного издательского проекта, в его фокусе — билингвальные поэтические издания, а также фотокниги. Параллельно начались эксперименты в перформативном формате (выступления с музыкантами и кристаллизация идеи «поэтического шоу»), в формате работы со звуком (выпуск нескольких аудиодисков, саунд-арт-инсталляции), а также в сфере сведения текста и движущегося изображения (видеопоэзии). Позднее к этим направлениям работы добавилось и создание арт-объектов и инсталляций.

При этом в фокусе все время остается текст и его производные (отсюда само название «текст-группа»). Совместные проекты реализуются на принципах «коллективного разума», ядро «Орбиты» не менялось все эти годы, только с переездом Жоржа Уаллика из Латвии он уже не так активно участвовал в работе группы после 2010 года. Особую роль в создании визуальной идентичности проекта сыграл дизайнер Владимир Лейбгам. В то же время круг авторов, дизайнеров, музыкантов и художников, с которыми сотрудничала и сотрудничает «Орбита», крайне широк и прочно вписывает их в общее поле актуальной латвийской культуры. Многие годы бессменным менеджером и настоящим ангелом-хранителем объединения выступает Инга Боднарюка-Мразаускас, которая участвует в планировании и разработке большинства проектов.

Orbita is a group of poets, photographers, artists and musicians founded in 1999 by Alexander Zapol, Vladimir Leibgam, Artur Punte, Vladimir Svetlov, Sergey Timofeev and Georges Wallik. They were brought together by the idea of ​​a common publication, which, realized in several issues of the Orbita almanac, led to the creation of their own publishing project, which focuses on bilingual poetry publications, as well as photo books. At the same time, experiments began in the performative format (performances with musicians and the crystallization of the idea of ​​a “poetry show”), in the format of working with sound (release of several audio CDs, sound art installations), as well as in the field of combining text and moving images (video poetry). Later, the creation of art objects and installations was added to these areas of work.

At the same time, the text and its derivatives remain in focus all the time (hence the name "text-group"). Joint projects are implemented on the principles of "collective intelligence", the core of "Orbita" has not changed all these years, only with the move of Georges Wallik from Latvia, he no longer actively participated in the work of the group after 2010. Designer Vladimir Leibgam played a special role in creating the visual identity of the project. At the same time, the circle of authors, designers, musicians and artists with whom Orbita has collaborated and collaborates is extremely wide and firmly fits them into the general field of current Latvian culture. For many years, Inga Bodnariuka-Mrazauskas has been the permanent manager and real guardian angel of the association, who participates in the planning and development of most projects.

books

Orbita's books are mostly bilingual poetry collections and photobooks. Their main distinguishing feature is experimentalism, which is especially evident in the editions of the Orbita poets: a convolute of two books connected by magnets with translations of poems into a visual language, made by 10 Latvian artists (Semyon Khanin. “Swim” / “Peldus”); a book with folding pages, color scheme for translations and originals and infographics in the content (“Artūra Punte's poetic dedications” / “Artūra Puntes poetiskie veltijumi”); a book with collages of texts in three languages ​​and photographs (Vladimir Svetlov. “second-hand” / “Lietots/Used”); a book complete with a notepad (Sergey Timofeev. "Replica" / "Replika"); a book where the texts are arranged so that they can be read by bilingual couples (“For us” / “Par mums” - a collection of Latvian poetry translated by Alexander Zapol).

Orbita editions are created in close cooperation with the book's artists, including Vladimir Leibgam, Aleksey Murashko, Mārtiņš Ratniks, Tom Mrazauskas, Ruta Briede and Artis Briedis, Liva Rutmane, Zygmunds Lapsa, Ernests Mucenieks, Ieva Skuja, Kaspars Murelis, Valters Verners, Ilva Klyavina.

Five almanacs “Orbita” have been published (including an audio CD and a collection of video poetry), an anthology “Sovremennaja russkaja poezija Latvii”, a collection “Prose”, an anthology “12 poets from Russia”, a poetry collection “Nauda” / “Deņgi”. Other publications include a collection of prose by Andrei Levkin, a book by film critic Dmitry Rantsev, a collection of Russian poems by Oyar Vatsietis, collections of poems by Georges Wallik, Oleg Zolotov and Inga Gaile, poetry collections by Sergei Timofeev "Almost Photos" and "Stereo" and Semyon Khanin's book "Just ". In 2013, Orbita launched a series of poetry collections by local authors whose books had not previously been published by Latvian publishing houses — Elena Glazova, Dmitry Sumarokov, Oleg Lentsoy, Evgeny Nelesh and Alexander Menshikov.

The ongoing series "Orbītas bibliotēka" (Library "Orbits") is published under the general editorship of Alexander Zapol - current Latvian literature and translations. Books by Arvis Viguls, Kirill Kobrin, Kikone, Andris Kuprish, Elvira Bloma, Andis Surgunts, Vilis Kasims, Andrey Senkov, Lauris Veips, Semyon Khanin, Elina Bakule-Weira, Andris Kalnozols, Leonid Dobychin, Robert Walzer, Arkady Dragomoshchenko and Richard Brautigan.

The first photobook was Laila Khalilova's book “36 EXP” published in 2006, edited by Alexander Zapol, Vladimir Leibgam and Vladimir Svetlov (Latvian prize of the year for the best photobook).

Photobooks "Orbits" (editors Vladimir Svetlov and Anna Volkova) are distinguished by a conceptual approach. "Schema" by Alexander Gronsky and Ksenia Babushkina plays with the perception of photography. The series of photobooks “Public Space” is dedicated to the public spaces of Latvia during the Soviet period: “Centrāltirgus” by Māra Brashmane consists of documentary images of the Central Market, a staged photograph depicts the life of the sanatorium “Rīgas Līcis” in the book by Vladimir Svetlov, “Palladium” by Andrey Strokin is compiled from the found photo archive of the cinema, in the book "Baltijas atklātnes" by the British architectural critic Owen Heatherly, diary, seemingly random photographs serve as illustrations for the texts. In addition to the series, the artist Roman Korovin’s album “Rock”, the collection of texts and photographs “Talka”, and the book “Glass Strenči”, introducing the archive of Strenci’s photo workshop from the collection of the Latvian Museum of Photography (in 2020, entered the top ten best photo books in the world at the Paris Photo competition – Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards).

The circle of authors whose works are published by Orbita is constantly expanding.
For more details, see the pdf of the catalog of publications until 2017 and the online store "Talka".

code, network and air

A number of Orbita's works involve the network environment and software in one way or another. These can be synthetic works using already existing IT solutions, or works involving the creation of their own art software, network environment and broadcast. The passage of a computer game-shooter in retro style (graphics by animator Edmunds Jansons) becomes a condition for reading the poetic text in Sergei Timofeev's work "I am the text". The web work of Alexander Zapol and Vladimir Leibgam “Something with coordination of movements” mimics a neutrally designed publication of Semyon Khanin’s poems, but in fact contains barely noticeable glitch distortions of the text - specially created by software, but perceived by the reader as distortions of perception. In the work “In Rimchik” by Alexander Zapol and Daniil Cherkassky, the text entered into the Google translator window is modified in such a way that when reproducing it, the voice robot becomes an actor - it suddenly acquires a character and its own speech personality.

Another example of the use of a utilitarian service for artistic purposes is the work of Arturs Punte, with the participation of a whole group of Latvian poets who, having previously coordinated their actions, invaded a television SMS chat, turning a stream of tickers into an aesthetically meaningful message. Own poetry service, which makes it possible to write text outside the usual two-dimensional plane - the work “Poe3D” (see the section “Installations and objects”) is an interactive tool for creating three-dimensional text models for printing on a 3D printer. Another constructor of poetic texts is the joint work of the Orbita participants - “The Poem of Čiekurkalns”. This is a database of all street inscriptions (photographs of signs, graffiti, etc.) of one of the geometrically most organized districts of Riga and a user interface for compiling poetic texts from this “street dictionary”. The network of Internet cafes that were once popular in the city served as the basis for the “Cybergraffiti” project, created by Artur Punte together with Alexander Yakovlev and Voldemar Punte - after unauthorized application of a certain “stencil” in computer settings, they began to transfer statistics of the color palette of sites visited by users to the project server , and a special application visualized this data in the form of huge abstract video projections.

Not only the use of the network environment and infrastructure, but also their creation can become the basis for a multimedia work. This is the case of the poetry radio station “Marx FM” (2014), which is now available as a streaming audio channel, but was created by Orbita as a pirate radio station in the FM band: for a week it broadcast poetic texts in the author’s reading in three languages ​​as part of the Riga festival Survival kit. A self-made transmitter, assembled by radio amateur Vladislav Bogdanov, was located in the attic of one of the houses in the center of Riga, on the roof of which an unauthorized antenna was also installed, providing a coverage radius of up to 4–5 km. Approximately at the same time, in cooperation with A. Landman, an application for the iPad “Miera Street” was developed, which made it possible to walk along the virtual map of Miera Street and, in a reliable audio panorama of the street, to the fragmented music of Jekabs Nimanis, hear the voices of three Latvian poets in different sound environments (cafe , gateway, park) - Janis Elsbergs, Sergey Timofeev and Andris Brezhe, reading their poems, which mention Miera Street. Another example of Orbita’s integration of ready-made software into its projects is the 2018 installation “Ieraks_tīts”, created for the Latvian Museum of Literature, in which the PhonoPaper application by Russian programmer Alexander Zolotov was adapted for the myth-making reconstruction of a hypothetical artifact of history - a non-existent pre-war recording of a poem Alexander Chuck.

performance

Performative practices as a development of the genre of traditional poetic reading are used by Orbita to embody the author's reading in various audiovisual media. From the very beginning of its existence, the project has been experimenting with ways of presenting the figure of a poet reading from the stage. So, the first performance "The shortest poetic reading" (1999) coincides in time with the creation of a text group. One of the aims of Orbita's performances is to remove the focus of the viewer's attention from the archetypal figure of the reader and transfer it to the actual poetic text. In the history of the project, there are many examples of performances with a variety of musicians - from academic to club. In some cases, this collaboration is improvisational (Stanislav Yudin, Platon Buravitsky, Yan Maksin, Selffish and other musicians), and sometimes it turns into more stable forms - Orbita published audio albums (CD Orbita 2, Orbita 4, sound engineer - Ivar Wigner) and video works (DVD-collection "Orbit 4", separate video works, such as "Tallinas Street", "A Man with a Woman", etc.), and also performed with her own musical group "Saules Sound", with which she was prepared hour concert program. A number of poetic performances by Orbita participants go far beyond the simple design of poetic reading in the direction of actionism and theater.

So, for example, Semyon Khanin's performance "The Theater of One Person" was a miniature box with all theatrical attributes (a miniature curtain, lighting, etc.), from the "stage" of which only the poet's head appeared before the viewer. On several occasions, Orbita conducted hoax teleconferences (for example, during the presentation of its first almanac), and also used real video broadcasting tools, as in the case of the Reality Commentators stream show, during which online broadcast from four webcams , located in different parts of Latvia, became a documentary video accompaniment for improvised dialogues and comments, including poetic texts.

In the case of Orbita, a poet can act not only as a performer, but also as a director of a poetic performance. Here we can recall Artur Punte's performance “UPS. On an Unwritten Poem” (2014), in which the role of the lyrical hero was played by the actor Viesturs Rozins. Other performance productions by Arthur Punte - The Settlers and Victims of Multitasking - also assumed rather strict instructions for the performers, but did not exclude improvisation. The performance of "Orbita" may not follow a strict scenario, but act as a modular shaping principle, in which verses, languages, and musical and sound components change from time to time, and in the case of the "FM Slow Show" the radio broadcast of the city where it takes place plays an important role. performance. At the Orbita mini-festival as part of the Poetry Days 2017 in the Noass floating gallery, the Orbita participants performed not as a group, but with a separate multimedia poetic performance prepared by each participant independently (or in collaboration with invited authors).

The uniqueness of individual performances is directly related to the venue - for example, it was the case with the performance of "Orbita" in the Riga Circus closed for reconstruction - in the performance "Like thronging beasts" the creak of old seats in the stands became an expressive means, and the audience and the speakers literally switched places. Orbita's new performance "Motopoiesis" suggests that the main source of all sound and video accompaniment is the voice of the poet himself and the dynamics of the text he utters. The voice generates sounds and triggers noise mechanisms, and the translation titles also serve as video accompaniment - they are viewed under a microscope.

The performative practices of the project have been developed in the dramatic genre as well. Individual members of Orbita have already acted as playwrights, for example, Alexander Zapol wrote texts for Vladislav Nastavshev’s play Sņeguročka, Artur Punte, in collaboration with Zane Volkinsteine, came up with the play-play The Day After Oil, staged at the Dirty Deal Teatro, and Sergey Timofeev received the theater award Spēlmaņu nakts 2014 for the libretto of the opera Mikhail and Mikhail Play Chess. Four poets acted as a collective author of the play “Five Songs from Memory” (2020), staged at the Mikhail Chekhov Theater in Riga by director Vladislav Nastavshev. The production was "in some ways frankly comical, and in some ways poignantly touching journey through the back streets of their own memory: the characters went to their goal, trying on different masks, combining fragments of memories, relying on associations, referring to scientific research, resorting to help of a professional healer and composing anniversary greetings. The text of the play also included several poetic works by the Orbit participants, which were performed by the choir of the Riga Schoolchildren's Palace "ACCOLADA". This experience was developed in the installation "The Dog Suspected Something" - an endless dialogue about everything between two battered retro TVs.