Grain: Mediator Between East and West
(2025)
author(s): Kateryna Tykhonenko
published in: Research Catalogue
"Grain: Mediator Between East and West" is an image-led, cross-temporal exploration of bread wheat as both a commodity and a metaphor. Drawing on its historical and practical ubiquity as a staple grain in agrarian (Eastern) Europe, wheat emerges as the focal medium through which cultural and geopolitical narratives are revealed. What narratives does bread wheat carry, and what is entangled within localised perspectives? To what extent does the cultural history of grain intersect with modern grain infrastructures, whereby wheat transforms from an elemental medium into a mediator between East and West? Through thinking with and about grain, this work interrogates the gaps, overlaps and resonances between East and West, the post-war Soviet 1940s and the present day, repositioning wheat as a cultural mediator.
This Master's project was conducted within the European Media Studies program at the University of Potsdam and University of Applied Sciences Potsdam, August 2025.
