Wandering in a Surf. Presentation of the archival project on conceptual art practices in the 1980s in Odesa
We invite you to the presentation of the archive of 1980s conceptual art from Odesa, Ukraine, which has been digitalized and presented to the public for the first time.
During the meeting, the curator of the project, Natalia Revko, and Yuri Lederman - an active part of the underground at scene at the time - will discuss Odesa counterculture that grew in the shadow of socialist realism, as well as the life and work of artists that faced censorship and persecution from the authorities.
Guests: Natalia Revko, Yuri Lederman
Host: Robert Jarosz
The event takes places in the exhibition space. To participate, please obtain a free event pass at the Museum ticket office or via the online M Shop. The passes will be available on Friday, April 19th.
The event will be streamed on the Museum's Facebook profile.
Funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
Yuri Leiderman – artist and writer was born in 1963 in Odesa, Ukraine. From 1983 he took part in non-official exhibitions in Odesa and Moscow. Yuri participated in numerous group and personal exhibition of contemporary art worldwide, including biennales in Venice, Sydney, Shanghai, etc. Yuri Leiderman is author of prose, poetry and essay books. His book "Olor" was awarded by Andrey Belyi literature prize in 2005. In 2009-2015 together with Andrei Silvestrov Leiderman worked on film project "Birmingham Ornament". Film "Birmingham Ornament -2" (2013) got special prize of jury in Rome Film Festival, "XXI century cinema" category. Yuri Leiderman is member of editorial board Ukrainian art and literature internet magazine "Prostory". He resides and works in Berlin now.
Natalia Revko – independent curator and contemporary art researcher. As a head of the NGO Slushni Rechi, Natalia primarily collaborates with emerging artists. Together they research the interconnections between the city topography, vernacular architecture, sound worlds and environmental issues that influence the surrounding landscapes. Recent projects include curation of the exhibition "I can only talk about war / I can not only talk about war" at the Center for Contemporary Art Laznia (Gdansk, Poland), collaboration with Kandis Friesen in "Her right year is shorter than the left'' at Galerie im Turm (Berlin, Germany), and co-curating online artistic research lab on war experiences Land to Return, Land to Care. Natalia graduated from the Ukrainian Catholic University. Previously she worked as an archivist at the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, where she focused on researching art communities and artistic practices of the 1980s and 1990s.
Robert Jarosz – head of the Artists' Archives and the Film Archive of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, curator of contemporary art exhibitions, author and music producer. Managing the Archives of Artists of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (artmuseum.pl/pl/archiwum), he curates permanent archival retrospective presentations online: Polish Performance Archive, Exchange Gallery Archive, Zbigniew Libera Archive and Tadeusz Archive Rolke among others.
The digitized archive of Yuri Lederman, as well as other private and institutional collections constitute an extensive publication that will be a valuable resource for researchers, curators and artists interested in the history of Ukrainian contemporary art. The archive - consisting of a collection of documentation of performances, photographs, letters, zines, and works on paper - will be published on the Museum’s platform Artist’s Archives. This collection documents the life and work of artists at the time when any artistic practices outside the official doctrine of socialist realism as well as any manifestation of counterculture were prohibited and even prosecuted by law in Soviet Ukraine.
During the conversation with Yuri we will discuss how the artistic community was formed in these circumstances as well as how the specific topography of Odesa, the port city stretched alongside the seashore, influenced their practice. We will talk about the relationships between the centre and periphery to question the concept of the periphery itself, referring to the concept of horizontal art history.
