Grafting Orchard Heritage

Publication & Research
A5, 295 pages, spiral bound

This work was completed as part of my Masters thesis at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

Grafting orchard heritage investigates the heritage politics of English orchards through a methodology of grafting. The project argues that the grafting serves as a viable way of celebrating the hybridity of heritage and historical narratives in such a way that the its local parts are not subsumed into a nationalist whole. This book, organised according to a calendar of orchard tasks, functions as an annotated archive, using primary research in the form of dynamic endnotes to literally comment on the narratives put forth in larger media portrayals of orchards and heritage (loss).

The endnotes disrupt the flow of the archival material introduced throughout the book, grafting them back onto local contexts. The hope is that they provide new ways of experiencing the text that precedes them, offering lines of flight from deterministic historical narratives. Instead, these endnotes embrace multiplicity and offer alternatives to single readings of heritage discourse and its impacts on ecologies, communities, history and their politics.