Nomadic Poetry is a long-term project consisting of a series of works with small ethnic groups in the Russian north. Each work represents one language group in the interactive textual-visual panoramic picture, which has been made in the location in Russia, where these people live. Besides the landscape, spectators can see the poets in the picture and hear their poetry surrounded by the language landscape of ambient nature. At the moment, I have worked with the 5 ethnic groups: Saami, Nganasan, Evenki, Nenets, and Dolgany.
In the work, spectators can see and interact with the moving panoramic pictures representing one of the nations. If spectators click on any object on it they can hear the word of the language of the ethnic group. Click on the tree and the word which means the tree will be spoken. Click on the cloud, lake, leaf, snow, or sun – everything that can be named on the picture can be clicked and spoken in the language of the people dwelling in the area. The sounds will be reflected from the screen's borders and echo several times before disappearing. If poets are clicked on, spectators hear their poetry or songs with the written translation. The horn of the reindeer is a sacral object that changes the panoramic picture if it is clicked in the center. In the work natural landscape is translated into a linguistic one. The inner thoughts of a possible observer – a representative of the people who once lived here could be visualized. All together – poetry with the number of spoken words from the vanishing language landscape.
More than 40 indigenous small-numbered peoples dwell in the territory of Russia. They speak different languages which all together form 7 groups. Those language groups are dissimilar. Many of the languages have no writing. They are disappearing because of the small number of their native speakers. There is no easy solution to the problem of vanishing languages. Notwithstanding the project doesn’t offer a good way to change the current situation, it creates an additional zone of visibility among other things. Even small nations have their folklore, poetry, and songwriters. It is possible to capture languages in their current states. Maybe additional attention allows reactivating the possibility to continue.
Moreover, the work is currently used as an attractive visual dictionary of the vanishing languages. I presented digital copies of the work to the communities of the people I worked with.
