The River Wailed Like a Wounded Beast (Berlin)

On June 6, 2023, Russian troops blew up the dam of the Kakhovka hydroelectric station reservoir, flooding dozens of villages and three nature reserves on the Ukrainian steppe. On March 22, 2024, during yet another missile attack on Ukraine, Russian missiles hit the Dnipro hydroelectric station, causing pollution of the Dnipro River and damaging the power plant’s dam (for the first time since the Second World War). These two episodes – just a small part of the tragic series of events Ukraine and Europe are facing – force us to reexamine the origins of the present-day energy infrastructure, its connection with environmental crimes and totalitarian regimes of the past. The construction of a cascade of hydroelectric stations on the Dnipro River and its cinematic representation offer us a look at the dark side of Soviet modernization with its "subjugation of nature” narrative, continued today in Russia’s colonial ideology. opening: friday, may 3, 2024, 17:00–23:00 curators: Alona Penzii, Stanislav Bytiutskyi, Oleksandr Teliuk project coordination: Vasyl Cherepanyn, Serge Klymko architecture of the exhibition space: Oleksandr Burlaka exhibition design: Lera Guievska director Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien: Stéphane Bauer programme coordination: Sofía Pfister production: Kristoffer Holmelund the project has been created in cooperation between the Visual Culture Research Center / Kyiv Biennial and the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre on the occasion of Kyiv Perennial in Berlin with the support of Teiger Foundation.

Program