Orbita
One fine day in 1999, five friends, five very different Latvian … Read Full Bio ↴Orbita
One fine day in 1999, five friends, five very different Latvian poets (Artur Punte, Sergey Timofejev, Semyon Khanin, Zhorzh Uallik, Vladimir Svetlov) who wrote in Russian, got together. First, they wanted to establish a "text-group" (analogy with a "rock-group"), then came up with a multi-media project entitled Orbita (The Orbit). We gave readings in clubs, on city squares; we even addressed the audience gathered on the bank of the Daugava from a small ship. We performed in Riga, Moscow, Minsk, Stockholm, Prague, Leipzig, New York… Also, we published an almanac where our texts entered into complicated games with photographic images. In 2000, we came out with a CD entitled O2, where poetry was mixed with electronic music, specially written for the disc by Riga musicians and composers. In 2001, we held a first poetic video festival, Word in Motion, where, in addition to our own work, we introduced a number of foreign artists who blend poetry with video art. Later we also launched our webpage www.orbita.lv where we publish our poetry, fiction and essays, as well as audio and video art.
In 2002-2004 we published few books of poetry, one more almanac and organized the second poetry video festival. From 2004 we started to work on this project – multimedia poetry CD+DVD Orbita 4. Audio CD is again a collaboration witn many different musicians from Riga, but also from Moscow and St.Petersburg. And on DVD you can find compiled works of Latvian artists from 2 video festivals Word in Motion and new videopoems from Orbita & partners. In 2005, the Orbita group still consists of five poets but now we also have an artist, Vladimir Leibgam who takes care of the visual side of our books and other “products”. In addition to literature, every one of us contributes to the overall project through some other form of self-expression: music, photography or video. What we habitually add to our texts -- expression, sound, performance - is not an end in itself, it is something not unlike a resonator, something that intensifies meaning.