Ballad of the Olive Trees functions as a proposal and investigatory work into contemporary themes of post-conflict memory and the multi-faceted influences that the memory mightsuccumb to. It follows the stories of former war prisoners and individuals who lost family members during the Cyprus 1974 invasion. The work questions the scale at which a local history is blown out of its contexts and how it becomes disembodied to fit selective narratives of socio-political interests. It explores the ways in which traumatic memories form narratives and how they are distributed upon their distinction from organic memories. The project’s processes scrutinise the processes of elimination memories suffer when infused into institutionalised spheres of collective memories.