Ash Stories: A Spell against Forgetting

Abstract

This paper will explore The Ash Project (2016-2019), which worked to commission a memorial sculpture and a series of walks, talks, workshops and exhibitions to create closer relationships between ash trees and the local puow trade in plants has created increased risks to plant health, and the way in which plants can perform complex relationships to a collective sense of national and colonial identity, through an exploration of ash migrations to the colonies via acclimatisatioblics. This paper will situate the concerns of the ash within broader thinking about capitalism's intensifying impact on nature. It explores hn societies in Australia and New Zealand. Finally, the paper thinks about how we might perform memorial acts to curate love or care while acknowledging our complex shared histories in multi-species entanglements.