The project is dedicated to the original genre of poetic video selfie, spontaneous composition of a poem in front of the smartphone video camera.
The genre of poetic video improvisation was born and is developing before our eyes, combining archaic forms of poetry when human turned to the surrounding nature, elements and deities, which was close to chanting, and had the conjuring and prophetic meaning.
Then poets switched to writing their poems on paper, the printing press contributed to replication of their works, but paper depersonalized the poetic lines, depriving them of the author’s intonation. With the advent of digital video cameras and smartphones, the poet can record the composition process, use this video selfie as a draft, or decide that the poem turned out well enough to be completely transferred to paper.
Such poems require the ability to say all the most necessary things in a poetic way in the allotted moments of the video camera on. The poet is a director, cameraman, author of the text and even a costumier. He chooses the place and the time, or a random image, thought or event prompts him to turn on the camera button and record his rhyming poem.
His co-authors are passers-by, houses, bird voices, everything that gets in the frame and cries out, remaining in the video sequence. Narcissus looking into the stream at his reflection is the metaphor of a video selfie, which encourages to see this myth in a new way, because the poet appearing on the smartphone display is not equal to himself as a person. Because he acquires features of a prophet, another, unintended and not comprehended by the author himself, and his speech comes to the fore, as it can be attributed both to the human, the poet, and to other spheres of the spirit. “But in the Self itself, we can’t get away from the eyes of the Non-Self”, wrote the poet Innokenty Annensky, meaning our creativity born from the myth and continuing the history of human self-cognition.
