Elastic Continuum

Elastic Continuum explores the flexible connections between people, plants, politics, and power through the material and symbolic transformations of Taraxacum koksaghyz—a rubber-producing plant commonly known as the Kazakh or Russian dandelion. The narrative of this new volume of K. Verlag‘s Processing Process series unfolds in two intertwined trajectories: one follows the plant’s historical journey from East to West, tracing its role within the political and economic imperialisms of the Soviet Union, Nazi-occupied Poland, wartime United States, and the European Union. The other retraces the artist Bethan Hughes's own path, moving from West to East, as she encounters the plant and the people entwined in its story across breeding facilities, research laboratories, herbaria, mountain valleys, and national archives.

Expanded through fragments of text, images, and documentation from the accompanying audio-visual installation, the book delves into the entangled biographies of the flower and a woman whose lives became deeply interwoven. In doing so, Hughes offers a poignant counter-narrative to the objectifying, extractive gaze, illuminating alternative ways of seeing and relating to the natural world.

Bethan Hughes audiovisual installations, sculptures and texts explore the unnatural ecologies generated through industry, commerce and technology. Her work has been exhibited at venues including LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón (ES); gnration, Braga (PT); Kunstpavillion, Innsbruck (AT); nGbK, Berlin; Ars Electronica, Linz (AT); haubrok foundation, and HAUNT/frontviews, both Berlin.