PLANT STORIES #1 Transformation Dinner
13 JUNE 2025 / 19:00–00:00
Conceived by Bethan Hughes, with contributions by Anguezomo Nzé Mba Bikoro, Bethan Hughes, Bilge Emine Arslan, Ece Eldek, Fetewei Tarekegn, Galo E. Rivera, Tang Han, Leslie García, Sina Ribak, T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society (Sumugan Sivanesan and Tessa Zettel), Tlayolan, Umut Azad Akkel.
As plants travel across geographies and epochs, interacting with the different practices of care, exploitation and ritual that humans create, they are transformed. From sustenance to symbol, medicine to ornament, weed to weapon, human understandings of and relationships with plants are in constant flux. Meanwhile, far beyond the human imagination, plants follow their own journeys of transformation and change that remain unknowable to us.
Celebrating the opening of the event series, PLANT STORIES starts with a communal gathering in the form of a dinner party: Taking place across the different spaces of Z/KU, this dinner features a series of interventions by artists, researchers, filmmakers, gardeners, and musicians, with each offering another reflection on plant transformation. Whether political agitators or symbols of resistance, musical companions or nourishing life-givers, we invite you to join us as we share plant stories, food and space, travelling on a collective journey of transformation.
Dinner planning and preparation by: Eliza Chojnacka.
Free entry. Food by donation. Please register HERE.
Bethan Hughes’ audio-visual installations, sculptures and texts interweave archival research and speculative narratives to explore the unnatural ecologies generated through industry, architecture, commerce and technology. Her work has been exhibited at venues including LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, Kunstpavillion, Innsbruck, nGbK, Berlin, and Ars Electronica, Linz. 2025 she published her first monograph: Elastic Continuum (K. Verlag) traces the material and symbolic transformations of a rubber-containing plant known as the Kazakh dandelion.