| Sumario: | This article addresses questions of memory, matter, temporality and narrative as they emerge in stable plant variation throughout processes of cultivation and breeding. I have come to investigate these topics through the art project The Order of the Potatoes, which combines potato breeding and artistic research. In this article I present two different but entangled narratives on potatoes and breeding. Both these stories begin at the time of early colonialism and capitalism at the end of the sixteenth century. On Linearity and Purity tells of an attempt to produce purity and linearity in plant matter. I describe how the principle of purity was invented as a category within breeding and how it benefitted both commercial and politico-ideological interests. On SpaceTime and Hybridity presents stories of some of the genetically rich and flexible potato varieties that were discarded in the pursuit of genetic purity, and that subsequently became forbidden for commercial cultivation within EU. I present the two narratives alongside each other as a way to make visible how they not only represent different perspectives on the same historical spacetime, but also how they involve different narrative formats. The story of purity progresses along a linear, future-directed time scale. By contrast, and drawing on the theory of memory and temporality developed by Karen Barad, the story of hybridity obtains form by the temporal multi-directionality that the manifold matters and memories the potato varieties compose and continuously re-compose.
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