Volodymyr Kuznetsov

Borshch for the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). Fruit Dryer

2023,
Installation Electric fruit dryer, vegetables, fruits

An electric fruit dryer is a tool that provides dehydration of ingredients for their further packaging in soup kits. When you sleep, when you go to work, when you eat, when you make love, when you visit exhibitions – the dryers work. For the second year since the start of the full-scale invasion, hundreds of volunteer dryers in houses and apartments have not been turned off for a single moment. The dryers work day and night. The people behind them work day and night. Hundreds of small and large home front initiatives are working tirelessly. Their goal is the same – Victory. Resource for exploitation of one dryer for one day using red beets as an example: 3 kg of raw beets, washed, peeled, grated, spread out in a thin layer on pallets, dried for about 7 hours, collected from the pallets, and sent for packaging. One volunteer uses from 1 to 14 dryers per day. Borshch for the AFU is a volunteer group established in March 2022 that produces dry soup mixes and sends them to the front line. Members of the group prepare dry soups, borshch, porridge, energy bars, and nut and fruit packs. Several hundred volunteers work together at various stages, from drying to packaging instant food. About 10,000 portions are made and sent to the front line every day. 90% of the group are women of all ages. The organization is very diverse, with residents of cities and villages from all over Ukraine and IDPs of various professions: teachers, bankers, accountants, farmers, drivers, advertising managers, pensioners, schoolchildren, and students. Every one of them contributes to the common cause. Borshch for the AFU is also a series of works, a documentation of the war experience, and a political archive of the present. It is an archive of gestures of solidarity and public social acts.