The wall hanging seen through the window of the boat, Selina Cooper. Photo: Rahila Gupta
I am going to visit Idle Women, an art project based on two narrow boats hitched together somewhere on the canals of Lancashire. When my train tickets arrive, stating destination, Burnley, my heart skips a beat. Why? Partly because my poor grasp of geography does not allow me to make the connection between the grimy reputation of Burnley with a romantic sojourn on the canals and partly the fear aroused by Burnley’s reputation for nurturing UKIP and the segregation of communities by race. I am about to discover that the art project aims to bridge the distance between these polarities.
When I get there I find the boats are actually moored in Nelson, in a predominantly working-class Asian area of sloping, narrow streets with terraced houses, at the bottom of which appears to be a small park. As you turn into the park and walk down the muddy path, you come to the canal, totally invisible from the road, like a child’s magic world at the bottom of the garden. Nelson is one of the many small towns near Burnley, nestling in the shadow of the Pendle hills, infamous for its burning of witches in the 1600s which, according to Sylvia Federici, ‘was a turning point in women‘s lives; it was the equivalent of the historic defeat … the cause of the downfall of the matriarchal world. For the witch-hunt destroyed a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the foundation of women's power in pre-capitalist Europe, and the condition for their resistance in the struggle against feudalism.’ This too is connected with the art project, witches being a preoccupation of Karen Mirza’s, currently artist-in-residence on one of the boats, who has designed a wall hanging with the words, ‘We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.’
