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Late last year in lavish surroundings, loggers, saw mill owners and forest defenders sat side-by-side watching a performance artist extract a leafy vine from her vagina. It was part of a peculiar gathering of arch enemies who'd spent decades warring over Tasmania's spectacular forests. Kirsha Kaechele had managed to wrangle them into shared spaces, over four days and nights, as part of a highly unconventional attempt to mediate an end to their seemingly endless battle.

"It's very hard to hate anyone when you're watching a naked woman re-leaf a dead tree from the depths of her beautiful female body," the artist, curator and wife to Museum of Old and New Art founder David Walsh declared on Instagram. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion. The performance, by Moroccan and African-American feminist Narcissister, was one of many that punctuated November's MONA Forest Economic Congress with avant-garde drama.



Another came in the form of a hulking log craned onto the museum's lawn to the absolute horror of conservationists who said it was from a forest that supports critically-endangered swift parrots. The arrival of the fallen beauty sparked an unplanned outpouring of grief by indigenous woman Ruth Langford, who wailed powerfully over its blunted remains. Kaechele's account is that both sides were rendered speechless for very different reasons.

"Some people were deeply moved," she tells AAP. "I think some of the industry guys were a li.

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