Dark Myriad 18 (Тьма Тем 18) is a videopoem that aims to create a new type of poetic language, integrating spoken word with moving image to develop an non-illustrative style. A process of painting by Inessa Demidova, captured in detail, evolves into a neo-cubist video composition that fuses the mechanisms of painting and language together.
The videopoem presented here is part of an album called Dark Myriad (Тьма Тем). The project aims to integrate the audio-visual elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions. This approach strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the natural language of the spoken word is only a part of the composition and the knowledge of this language does not limit the understanding and appreciation of the piece. The project builds on Eta Dahlia’s previous videopoem album Little Flowers (Цветочки) and develops the visual aspects and techniques of creating unified videopoetic experience.
The title Dark Myriad comes from an ancient Slavonic numbering system and signifies the biggest possible number, which is linguistically associated with darkness and its perceived infinity.
Eta Dahlia is a Russian poet and filmmaker based in London. His work combines minimalist Russian poetry with a range of audio-visual media. He works with spoken word, video, images, colours and music, integrating these elements into inseparable rhythmic and rhyming compositions to create coherent and complete multimedia poetic pieces. Through these interdisciplinary pieces Eta strives to reach a universal type of poem, where the understanding and appreciation of a piece is not limited to its original language.
Recently, Eta Dahlia’s work has been exhibited in the UK as well as in the US, France, Germany, Italy, Romania and Mexico. His first videopoetry album Tsvetochki was selected by over twenty festivals worldwide and was awarded a number of prizes.
