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. This new volume in K. Verlag’s Processing Process series unfolds along two interwoven trajectories. One traces the plant’s historical journey from East to West, examining its role within the political and economic imperialisms of the Soviet Union, Nazi-occupied Poland, wartime United States, and the European Union. The other follows artist Bethan Hughes’s own movement from West to East, as she encounters the plant and the people bound up in its story – across breeding stations, research laboratories, herbaria, mountain valleys, and national archives.