Vernissage: May 9th 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
Michael Horbach Foundation
Wormser Str. 23
50677 Cologne

The consequences of climate change, triggered by human interventions in nature, which are already clearly observable, are extremely diverse. They include, on the one hand, creeping environmental changes such as the increasing salinization of groundwater resources, a change in tropical precipitation patterns and a higher probability of droughts, and on the other hand sudden events such as flood disasters in coastal areas as a result of rising sea levels or the rise of the same. In addition, an increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones in the Caribbean and parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans can be expected. This can pose a threat to human security. On the one hand, there is a direct risk of being harmed by an environmental incident. On the other hand, the risk of bad harvests and the associated food shortages increases. New health risks arise from the spread of tropical diseases such as yellow fever or malaria in ever larger areas of the world.

Millions of people are threatened in their human security; in other words: there is danger to life and limb. Nevertheless, even in view of these environmental changes, human migration decisions remain highly complex. It is not just the consequences of climatic change that are causing people to leave their place of residence. Rather, many factors play a role: Economic, political or social framework conditions can contribute to the decision whether someone leaves his place of origin or not. In short: migration decisions are usually not based on a single cause, but on an interplay of different motives and compulsions.

The fact remains that people in all parts of the world are forced to leave their homes in order to be able to lead a safer life. As a rule, this does not happen eruptively but creeping over long periods of time and mostly in the local area. From the village to the small town, to the big city At the end of this application there are the metropolises of the global south, which will hardly be able to withstand the socio-economic pressure.

The works in the exhibition show, on the one hand, human interventions in nature and, on the other hand, their effects on local people and the social consequences for Europe as well.

The exhibitors are: Aliona Kardash, Julia Sellmann, Daniel Chatard, Thomas Morsch & Magnus Terhorst, Maximilian Mann, Dirk Gebhardt

Russian Germans - Aliona Kardash

Around 2.4 Million Russian-Germans live in Germany today. Officially, these people are not immigrants, they are Germans, who came back to their motherland from Russia. That was also the reason, why they got regular German passports already at the state border. Their ancestors emigrated to Russia in the 18th century following the call of queen Kathrin the Great to settle there. At the beginning of the 20th century, already 1,7 Million Germans were living in the so-called “German republic” in the European part of Russia. During the Second World War, they were seen as enemies inside the country and were deported to Siberia and Central Asia without a right to come back. In 1990, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a pact that allowed „Soviet citizens of German nationality“ to fulfill their „national, linguistic and cultural identity”. A lot of people used this possibility to escape from the bad economical situation, poverty and instability in Russia and immigrated to Germany. But instead of these daily problems came the other difficulties. The community, that was seen as Germans in Russia, suddenly became Russian, because they had cultural more incommon with any village in Siberia, than with their new homeland. Everything was different - habits, society, even the German language changed a lot in these 200 years. Sometimes even after 15 or 25 years in the new country, many of them feel a strong nostalgia for the Russian widths, consume the news from Russian media and on the weekend play together a famous Russian TV-Quiz from childhood. This is a project about the life of people, who are searching for their identity and their own place in their new reality.

Angela – Julia Sellmann

There she is, puffy-faced, with black hair, underweight, only 2,5 kilograms, but alive: his daughter Angela. Sellmann's project accompanies six refugee families from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Cameroon that named their children Angela Merkel, Christ Merkel, Angela, Angela, Angela Merkel und Angela as an expression of gratitude for Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. They live in big cities and in small villages, in shabby institutional housing and lovingly decorated apartments with children’s rooms with posters of German YouTube stars on the walls. Some are able to tell their stories in fluent German, while others can barely speak a word of it. Who are these families and what have they experienced since their arrival?

Rural Exodus Mongolia - Maximillian Mann

Hardly any other country is affected by climate change as much as Mongolia. Once upon a time, nomads and their cattle found everything they needed to live on
the steppes. However it is getting more and more difficult. There has never been a greater rural exodus than in recent years. Annually thousands of families with their children move from the steppes into the city in search of urban happiness, work and training. The yurt quarters on the outskirts of the city are growing rapidly, 60 percent of all Ulan-Batar residents now live in these suburbs, some still in yurts. A lack of hygienic conditions, a lack of drinking water systems and medical care are characteristic of these residential areas. For me, the yurt quarters are a symbol of the incredibly fast change in Mongolia. They form a kind of transition between countryside and city and between nomad life style and city life. Yurts eventually become permanent houses and nomads become city dwellers.

No Man's Land - Daniel Chatard

The project „No Man‘s Land“ deals with the conflict over the extraction of lignite in the Rhenish mining area, where the energy company RWE operates the open-cast mines Hambach, Garzweiler and Inden. Together they are the largest source of CO2 emissions in the whole of Europe. For the expansion of the mines, fields had to give way, forests were cut down and entire villages destroyed and resettled.
But since 2012, resistance has been forming in the environmental movement, which uses methods of civil disobedience against the industry and occupies the Hambach Forest, which was planned to be cut. The conflict culminated in the eviction of the forest in 2018. As the remainings of the forest were then presumably saved by environmentalists‘ efforts, inhabitants of the last villages, which are in the process of resettlement, gained hope they could stay, too. However, the current plan is for the mining to continue until 2038.

 Between Hope and Disease  -  Thomas Morsch & Magnus Terhorst

There are about six hundred people living in Bukinje, a small village right next to Bosnia & Herzegowina's biggest powerplant - the Termoelektrana Tuzla. About eighty percent of the Bosnian electricity is produced in this monstrous building. Caused by the costs and corruption the powerplant-management refuses to use new and cleaner technologies neither the local politics try to stop them. So the toxic waste is pumped into the seas above Bukinje, dries them out, and pollutes the groundwater. Because of a lack of money, most of the inhabitants grow their own food which leads to a lot of diseases like cancer or asthma. For the people in Bukinje, air pollution is part of everyday life but they try to help each other as much as possible, whether, with medication or food, people try to make the most out of their situation

The work of Thomas Morsch and Magnus Terhorst sheds light on how everyday life in Bukinje is influenced by Bosnias biggest power plant.

The dry heart of Brazil - O Sertão - Dirk Gebhardt

In nine Brazilian states in the north-east of the country, only 300 kilometers from the coast, life is determined by drought and lack of water. Brown, gray with sprinkles of green is the landscape of the Sertão. 1.5 million square kilometers of arid scrubland - which is five times the area of ​​Germany - broken through by mountain ranges of bizarre table mountains and the Rio Sao Francisco. Over 35 million people live in the north-eastern hinterland, far from the economic and political centers of the country. Once again, the residents are exposed to a major drought. In many places it has not rained enough from 2012 till 2017, the earth has crumbled to dust, the catinga - the scrubland - rise up into the sky like dry skeletons. In the past, people fled the drought, this time they are still holding out. They fight for every cattle, every sheep and every crumb of fertile soil. The wells drilled with the most modern technology are slowly drying up, the reservoirs are drying up. Dirk Gebhardt has been accompanying various families in the region for 5 years and has documented the socio-economic changes in one of the most unknown regions of Brazil.