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Artwork by: Klaus Pichler

1 Gram of Life

Austrian-Ukrainian art exhibition on the topic of grain in the former grain storage and former farm.

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The weight of 1 grain is approximately 1 gram. 1 grain gives a hope for life. Through this art exhibition we are discovering the question of the value of human life. Ukraine used to deliver grain to over 400mln people worldwide. Ukraine used to be a country that in normal times fed 10 times its own population, possessing some of the richest agricultural land in the world.

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However, the situation has changed dramatically with the Russian invasion into Ukraine. Hunger is used as the tool of war and oppression. Human life is devalued. Ukraine’s front-line farmers battle to feed the world. In field, sown with bombs, Ukrainian farmers collect deadly harvest. How much does it cost now for Ukraine to grow grain, vegetables and fruits?

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We don´t want our children to experience war or hunger. That is why it is important to draw attention to these burning issues in an attempt to create a better future for the upcoming generations.

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The exhibition deals with the topic of grain and food security for the sustainable future in relation with the history of Ankerbrotfabrik. “In 1891, Heinrich and Fritz Mendel founded the Viennese bread and pastry factory in Vienna's Favoriten district. In 1938, the factory was aryanized, and the Mendl family managed to flee into exile. The factory was severely damaged in the war, but it was still possible to maintain production almost continuously. In April 1945, after the end of the war, an emergency program was launched to resume the supply of the Viennese population. The founding family returned and Ankerbrot became the property of the Mendl family again.” (Source) The art exhibition organized at the Ankerbrotfabrik will reflect upon the topic of grain and the value of human life in relation to the history of the factory through the prism of the contemporary situation in Ukraine.

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Artists: Klaus Pichler, Marta Syrko, Maria Proshkovska, Christina Helena Romirer, Pavlo Mazai, Helene Litorelle, Oksana Gryniv, Yana Gryniv,  Anna Miller, Mishel Kramar, Uliana Kolchanova, Danylo Tsikhotskyi, Mykhailo Moskalov.

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Curated by: Yana Gryniv

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Public relations: Nadiia Yanieva

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Installation: Olha Sikora, Nadiia Yanieva, Iryna Rominishyn, Iryna Drobovych, ÇaÄŸdaÅŸ Çeçen, Dmytro Gryniv, Yana Gryniv

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Photography printing: Pavlo Mazai

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Photographers at the events: Maryana Kosovan, Mariia Tsaritsyna, Alina Araslanova

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Translation: Ronnie Rohrecker

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This exhibition is part of the FAVORITE FALL festival 2024.

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Time: 21-28.09.2024 (*check the schedule!!!)​

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Klaus Pichler

“Grain As A Weapon”

photography series

 

Klaus Pichler, born in 1977, is a photographer from Vienna, Austria. An original landscape architect, he focuses on themes at the intersection of ecology, society, science and discourse, driven by curiosity about how people and their environments interact. His projects have been exhibited internationally and he has published several of them as photo books, such as “Golden Days Before the End” (Edition Patrick Frey, 2016), “This will change your life forever” (self-published, 2017), “The Petunia Carnage (self-published, 2021) or “Fear guards the lemon grove” (Fw:books, 2024).

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"In mid-September 2023, I received a package from Ukraine, sent by a Ukrainian dock worker who answered my call. The contents: around 5kg of burnt grain - wheat and barley - that was destroyed in a Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail in summer 2023. The attack on this grain warehouse is just one of a long list of targeted Russian attacks on Ukrainian agricultural, grain and port infrastructure that have occurred since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

 

Ukraine, also called the “breadbasket of Europe”, is an important player in global agricultural markets: with an export volume of 33.5 million tons, Ukraine was the fourth most important exporter of agricultural products worldwide in 2021. An area of 43 million hectares, or 71.3% of the country's area, was designated as agricultural land before the war. It is estimated that before the Russian invasion, Ukraine accounted for 8 to 10% of global wheat exports and 10 to 12% of corn and barley exports, and around 400 million people worldwide were dependent on Ukrainian exports.

 

With the war against Ukraine, the targeted Russian destruction of Ukrainian agriculture by the Russian invaders began - fields were burned and mined, grain stores were bombed, crops were destroyed or plundered, agricultural machinery was destroyed, Ukrainian export ports on the Black Sea were blocked and their access roads were made impassable with sea mines . As a result of this export blockade, huge quantities of Ukrainian grain were stuck in the ports and thus withdrawn from the world market. At the same time, large quantities of grain were stolen by the Russian attackers in the occupied Ukrainian territories, transported away and relabelled as Russian goods using 'grain laundering'. The consequences of the Russian attacks are immense: the Kiyv School of Economics estimated direct damage to the agricultural sector in the first year of the war at $8.7 billion and indirect losses such as reduced crop production, logistics disruptions and higher production costs at an additional $31.5 billion -Dollar. At the end of 2023, it was estimated that the amount of grain produced in Ukraine had decreased by 29% since the Russian invasion began.

 

The Russian war of aggression on Ukraine is not only a war for territory, but also a war for resources - including iron ore, coal, natural gas, metals and grain. The attack on Ukrainian grain exports also has a global dimension, the effects of which are above all affect countries in the global south. Or, as former Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev so cynically put it in April 2022: “It so happened that the food security of many countries depends on our supplies. It turns out our food is our silent weapon 😉. “Silent but mighty”. This “weaponization of food” is not only an attack on Ukraine itself and a violation of the Geneva Conventions Protocols, but a deliberate attempt to exacerbate global food insecurity.

 

The use of grain as a weapon to serve the strategic goals of a belligerent country is concerning. This is especially true when you consider that the targeted blocking of access to food can have devastating consequences for the innocent residents of the attacked country and, through blocked exports, also for people far away from the war zone. The intention behind this fits into the Russian concept of hybrid warfare, as the former German ambassador to Moscow, Rüdiger von Fritsch, notes: “Putin's calculation is that after the collapse of grain deliveries, the starving people from the regions in the Middle East and will flee in Africa and try to get to Europe. In doing so, he wants to destabilize Europe and build up political pressure so that Western states give up their tough stance against Russia.” At the same time, Russia, the world's most important wheat exporter, is positioning itself to compensate for the forced Ukrainian export losses in the countries of the Middle East and Africa and to drive the states that were previously supplied by Ukraine into Russian dependence.

 

The Russian war of aggression exposes the vulnerability of global food export cycles and clearly shows the consequences for world nutrition. When Russia blocked Ukrainian ports at the beginning of the war, this led to a huge increase in grain prices on world markets; wheat prices on European futures markets rose by over 30% at one point. Since mid-2022, world market prices for agricultural products have fallen again, but they remain volatile due to the uncertain situation.

According to the UN World Food Program, 783 million people suffer from chronic hunger and 333 million people are at the mercy of acute food insecurity. Even before the war in Ukraine, the number of people affected by hunger worldwide was increasing, and the effects of the war are making the situation even more difficult. Mathias Mogge, board member of Welthungerhilfe, blames this on a “polycrisis”: “The increasing effects of climate change, conflicts, economic shocks, the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war have not only exacerbated social and economic inequalities, but also the “The progress made in reducing hunger in many countries has slowed down or even reversed.”

 

Back to the Russian war of aggression: The history of the war in Ukraine is the tragedy of a nation threatened in its existence with countless victims and great destruction. At the same time, it is also a story of Ukraine's impressive handling of Russian aggression, a story of fierce military and civil resistance and ongoing attempts to deal with the consequences of the attacks. This also applies to the Ukrainian agricultural sector, whether family farms or large agro-industry companies: every effort has been and is being made to continue cultivating the fields, often after the fields have been cleared of mines, and with helmets and flak jackets. In this respect, the chronology of Russian attacks on the agricultural sector is also a chronology of the Ukrainian search for and implementation of measures and agreements with international allies in order to be able to continue producing and exporting grain despite the war.

 

In May 2022, the Government of Ukraine and the European Commission presented the “Solidarity Lanes”, an initiative to facilitate food exports from Ukraine via EU road, rail and sea routes. Further agreements between Ukraine and the EU, such as the temporary suspension of export tariffs and tariff quotas on Ukrainian agricultural and food products or the facilitation of formalities in goods trade, should expand export opportunities across the borders of Ukraine and the EU. In November 2022, the “Grain from Ukraine” initiative was presented, under which Ukraine, partner countries and private donors deliver Ukrainian grain to countries in Africa and Asia suffering from malnutrition and extreme hunger. On July 22, 2022, the most important agreement to date, the “Black Sea Grain Initiative” (also called the “Grain Deal”), came into force, a UN-brokered and Turkish-administered agreement between Ukraine and Russia on the safe export of Ukrainian grains Grain against unhindered export of Russian fertilizers and raw materials. A shipping route was established between the Ukrainian ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, and the port in Istanbul, on which around 33 million tons of grain and foodstuffs could be exported to a total of 45 countries in over 1,000 trips by 722 ships.

 

On July 23, 2023, after months of deliberately slowing down the processing of ships in Istanbul, Russia unilaterally canceled the Grain Deal without giving reasons. In response, Ukraine organized a “humanitarian corridor” together with the EU from August 10, 2023, which leads along the southwestern Black Sea coast in Romanian waters towards Istanbul. At the same time, the search for alternatives to the Black Sea route began, with the ports along the Danube on the Ukrainian-Romanian border being used in particular to load the grain onto trucks and transport it overland.

 

With the withdrawal from the Grain Deal, Russia began targeted bombing of Ukrainian grain warehouses and port infrastructure in the Black Sea ports and the ports on the Danube along the Ukrainian-Romanian border. In the period between July and October 2023 alone, an estimated 130 grain infrastructure facilities and 300,000 tons of grain were destroyed in Russian attacks. There is currently no end in sight.

This new phase of Russian aggression against Ukrainian grain production finally brings us back to the destroyed grain from the port in Izmail mentioned above. It is not just a relic of war, a tiny fraction of an elusive amount of grain that was wantonly destroyed. The charred grains also contain a report on how global commodity cycles work, on food exports, globalized trade, international inequalities and dependencies, and, above all: proof of the vulnerability of the world's food supply. The burned grain is therefore not only a metaphor for the senselessness of this war of aggression, it is also an appeal to the obligation of global society to take decisive action against any attack on the world's food supply."

 

Klaus Pichler, December 2023

Marta Syrko

“Sculpture”

photography series

 

Ukrainian-born fine-art photographer Marta Syrko (1995) is illuminating to the world the high cost of war, which she stunningly displays through her current portrait series, Sculpture. Confronting her own intergenerational traumas, and the traumas currently inflicted on her country by russia’s full-scale invasion, Marta seeks to bring awareness and healing to the complex nature and lasting impacts of war: on the infrastructures of mind, body and soul; and enduring societal challenges. These obstacles in Marta’s and her country’s path, serve as a creative exploration into pondering on how our greatest obstacles can lead to greater personal and collective healing.

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Marta currently lives in a war-zone. She understands deeply the nuanced damaging impacts of war from her own current lived experience. She has endured living in an apartment with her husband with shattered windows, due to the shock-waves of missiles colliding with nearby buildings. Following that experience, she lived in a building with twenty other people in order to have access to a basement-come-bomb shelter. At one point, Marta generously opened up her studio for those experiencing homelessness due to the war. She has endured the terrors of war, its tremendously painful impacts on her nervous system, and knows very personally what it means to not feel safe.

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In her series, Sculptures, Marta portrays severely wounded people recovering from their war-related traumas. Working with them in her studio in Lviv, where she grew up and currently resides, she took time to get acquainted with each of them, hear their stories, and the traumas they endured. It was their first time being photographed nude, aside from a delicately placed cloth. Marta created a safe environment for them in which to be vulnerable, engaging each of them with a profound sense of empathy, dignity, and tenderness.

Maria Proshkovska

“Farina”

5 hours performance video documentation by Ornella De Carlo.

Copy is held at CSM Museum & Study Collection. 

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In this performance Maria Proshkowska had been grinding into flower Ukrainian grain, destroyed by the russian shelling. She didn´t stop for a second for 5 hours.

To show Maria´s performance at Das LOT means a lot to us! This space used to be a grain storage at the bread factory, once aryanized by the Nazi. We see a strong connection to the space and a close parallel with the contemporary situation of the russian invasion into Ukraine.

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A solo 5 hours duration performance by Maria Proshkovska, which took place on 17 September 2023 in Bologna, in one of the largest and most powerful museums of contemporary art in Italy, MAMbo – Museo D’Arte Moderna di Bologna/ex Forno Del Pane.

Curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Giulia Pezzoli.

“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has forced millions of Ukrainian women and children to ask for protection in different parts of the world. In the same way Maria and her son Illya came to Bologna, where the city’s commune and MAMbo provided them with shelter. When such terrible things as war happen, the very most basic things are the most valuable. Things that have been the foundation of human society for thousands of years: safety, roof, and food – daily bread.

A focal point of city life, MAMbo has become a source of inspiration, work, and new relationships for the artist. The institution today fulfils the same role that another one on the same site did in the past. One of the largest public ovens in southern Europe – Forno Del Pane not only acted as a guarantor of hunger prevention in the region, creating opportunities for all people in need to feed their families, but also served as a platform for social communications and developing the society.

Bologna has always been open to progress, very hospitable and has developed social initiatives. Curiosity and openness to others is a distinctive feature of Bolognese people, and this is the reason why the Ukrainian artist and her son became part of the cultural life and people’s lives. This special ability to be heard in the city prompted Maria to create a performance that is not only an act of gratitude to Bologna, but is also closely connected to her suffering homeland. In this way, the artist wants to continue to speak about the need to support Ukraine and remind us that the war continues to destroy all, even the most fundamental spheres of people’s life as well as global world food safety.

Referring to the endless cycle of the millstone, Maria metaphorically traces the commonality of human experience and, in this utilitarian way, highlights the unified basic values that are understandable and important to everyone. Giving up her physical effort and time, the artist makes flour for 5 hours from Ukrainian grain burned due to the direct missile hit of russian aggression in front of the city’s residents and visitors. Just like years ago, the same place between two chimneys* attracts people to join the process of bread making and growth of hope. The hard physical labour of a graceful young woman and the grain burning from a direct missile hit reminds us of the high price Ukraine is paying for the harvests of recent years, where a wheat field has become a real battlefield.

We can only state the fact that today cultural institutions are a kind of guarantor of our humanity and honesty with ourselves, our points of attraction. Just as the public oven was the core of what it means to be a city, our temples of cultural treasures are the core of what it means to be a human being.”

*One of the largest public ovens in Italy – Forno del Pane built in 1915 by the mayor Francesco Zanardi and now home to MAMbo.

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Stern Experimental Theater

“Wie viel kostet eine Semmel?”

performance​

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When: 21.09, 15:15​

Where: BROTFABRIK WIEN (inner yard) Absberggasse 31, 1100​

What: performance, part of the exhibition

1 GRAM OF LIFE exhibition FAVORITE FALL (opening)​

Who:

   Anna Miller

   Mishel Kramar

   Uliana Kolchanova

   Danylo Tsikhotskyi

   Mykhailo Moskalov​

Why: because we care​

Video by: Mariia Tsaritsyna

Klaus Pichler

"Grain as a Weapon"

installation

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In mid-September 2023, Klaus Pichler received a package from Ukraine, sent by a Ukrainian dock worker who had followed his call. The contents: burnt grain - wheat and barley - that was destroyed in a Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail in the summer of 2023. The attack on this grain warehouse is just one of a long list of targeted Russian attacks on Ukrainian agricultural, grain and port infrastructure that have occurred since Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

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Ukraine, also called the “breadbasket of Europe”, was the fourth largest exporter of agricultural products in the world in 2021 with an export volume of 33.5 million tons, and it is estimated that around 400 million people - mainly from countries in the Middle East and Africa - were dependent on Ukrainian grain. The deliberate blockade of Ukrainian sea routes by the Russian invaders brought exports across the Black Sea to a virtual standstill for months and global grain prices skyrocketed. Together with the systematic destruction of Ukrainian grain infrastructure and the organized theft of grain from the occupied territories, there was a 'weaponization of food' by Russia.

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Klaus Pichler's work attempts to explain the global impact of the Russian attacks on the Ukrainian grain industry. The focus is on quantifying the attacks on the grain sector in order to illustrate the dimensions of the Russian invasion and its impact on global food security.

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GRAIN NUMBERS

Klaus Pichler

 

10

Short: Ukraine 2021 - 10% of the worldwide wheat production

Ukraine is one of the world's major grain producers and exporters, in 2021 it accounted for 10% of the world wheat market, 15% of the corn market, and 13% of the barley market and even 50% of world trade on the sunflower oil market. The agricultural area covers 32 million hectares, which equals 70% of the land area.

 

19,7

Short: worldwide wheat price increased 19,7% after Russian invasion in spring 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 wreaked immediate havoc on the international markets for agricultural commodities, particularly wheat, whose prices soared by 19,7% in spring 2022. This was due to the coordinated destruction of agrarian infrastructure and the targeted arson of grain fields in Ukraine, and the blockage of the major Black Sea ports by the Russian invaders, which caused serious disruption in European and other supply chains.  

 

149

Short: Ukrainian ports and grain shipping routes were blocked for 149 days after the start of the Russian invasion

For the first 149 days of the war, the Russian blockage of Ukrainian ports and the mining of shipping routes led to a complete suspension of maritime grain shipments from Ukraine, leaving vast amounts of grain stuck in storage. The blockade sparked global panic about where to buy wheat, particularly in countries in North Africa and the Middle East which rely on grain imports from the region and already face food shortages on top of economic and climate crises.   

 

1.103

Short: 1.103 voyages from Ukraine left for Istanbul with the ‘Black Sea Grain Initiative’ from July 2022 to July 2023

In July 2022 the Black Sea Grain Initiative came into force, an agreement among Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the United Nations over the safe navigation for the export of grain and related foodstuffs. The ships would traverse the Black Sea in demined corridors, with Turkey inspecting all merchant vessels. In total, 1.103 voyages of 724 ships successfully left from Ukrainian ports carrying nearly 33 million tonnes of grain and other food products to 45 different countries. 57% of grain exports went to developing countries.  

 

330.000

Short: Between July 2023 and November 2023, Russian drone attacks destroyed 330.000 tonnes of grain at Ukrainian ports.

On 17 July 2023, Russia suspended its participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative. Simultaneously, Russia started a deliberate series of attacks on the Ukrainian grain infrastructure, hitting grain and port infrastructure in Odesa and the Danube ports. Until November 2023, six civilian ships were hit and some 330.000 tonnes of grain and 168 port facilities were destroyed during the drone attacks. Its goal was to destroy Ukraine’s export ability and enforce a maritime blockade of the Black Sea, even though it would worsen the existing global food crisis.  

 

3.800.000

Short: 3.800.000 tonnes of grain from Ukraine were transported with the ‘Humanitarian Corridor’ Initiative from July 2022 to July 2023

As a reaction on the end of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a 'humanitarian corridor'  close to the borders of Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria to Istanbul was established in August 2023. By late November 2023, some 150 ships had exported 3.800.000 tonnes of grain. Together with grain transported via land corridors through EU countries ('solidarity lanes') and the 'Grain from Ukraine' initiative, the effects of the Russian invasion on both the Ukrainian economy and global food supply were partially eased. However, the total amount is still 30% less than what Ukraine exported pre-war.    

 

6.000.000

Short: between February 2022 and November 2023, Russia has stolen 6.000.000 tons of grain from Ukraine

It is estimated that by November 2023, Russia had stolen 6.000.000 tons of grain from the occupied territories of Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war. The organized grain theft, which involves seizing Ukrainian grain storage facilities, building new railways, and taking away the grain on cargo ships, enables occupying forces to steal up to 12,000 tons of grain a day. This scale likely constitutes the war crimes of starvation and pillage, making it part of Russias deliberate strategy of weaponizing food, harming millions of vulnerable people in Ukraine and around the world.   

 

400.000.000

Short: 400.000.000 million people in the world are dependent on grain exports from Ukraine

Before the war, 400 million people in the world were dependent on grain exports from Ukraine, counting multiple countries in Africa and the Middle East among its top buyers. In particular, the grain supply of Lebanon (74%), Pakistan (59%), Libya (49%), Ethiopia (45%), Tunisia (31%) or Mauritania (21%) was severely affected by the war, alongside countries like Benin, Laos, Egypt, Sudan or Senegal. Taking into account that Russia, as the world's top exporter of wheat, considers the weaponization of food as part of hybrid warfare and also has the instrument of intentionally restricting own food exports, the vulnerability of the country global food supply is becoming clear. 

 

783.000.000

Short: an estimated 783.000.000 million people are facing chronic hunger worldwide

Ending world hunger is one of the greatest challenges of our times. Across the globe, an estimated 783 million people are facing chronic hunger, representing an increase of 122 million people compared to 2019. Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has further driven up prices, which had already been increasing since 2020, and has lead to a drop of Ukraine's grain production by 29% for the market year 2022/23, compared to the year before.