Our Ship Is a Corsair Schooner
A screening programme tracing Odesa video art from the 1990s to the present. Early experiments, television footage and performance documentation are shown alongside contemporary moving-image works.
Co-curated by Andrii Siguntsov and Anna Morokhovska in collaboration with the Museum of Odesa Modern Art. Presented at MAXXI, 26 March–21 April 2024.
About the project
Drawing on the collection of the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, the screening traces the movement of Odesa video from open-ended experimentation towards recognition as an artistic medium. Curated by Andrii Siguntsov and Anna Morokhovska, it begins with a deliberately heterogeneous sequence of pirate footage, television programmes, performances and short films.
This early period of experimentation was followed by a relative retreat from video in the early 2000s. From 2014, moving image returned to the centre of many artistic practices, acquiring new urgency and new subjects. The programme follows this uneven development without flattening it into a single style or a continuous story of progress.
Provocation, self-irony and a reflection on art as a space of introspection and freedom connect otherwise very different works. Together, they reveal the expressive range of Odesa’s video scene. The screening was developed in collaboration with the museum; the videogallery was supported by Fondazione In Between Art Film.