A few days late on this one, thanks to traveling, but here is week #4, about the arpilleras of Chile and the arpilleristas who made them.
During the reign of Augosto Pinochet (a dictator in power from 1973 to 1990) in Chile, men were disappearing and the government wouldn’t tell the people who were asking why. Women were allowed to go once a week to the local government office and ask, but no one would tell them anything. (According to some reports, during his time in power, over 3,000 people were killed and around 30,000 were tortured.)
Added to all of this was that people couldn’t talk to each other because they didn’t know who was supplying what information to the government. Under the safety of the church, the Archdiocese of Santiago, set up a human rights organization where women could come together and make tapestries about what was happening.
Folk lore has it that Peace Corps volunteers smuggled these tapestries out of the country (often with little pockets in the back containing paper with more information) and that is how the world found out about what Pinochet was doing.
Below is more information taken from various sources around the web. Clicking on the text and on the photos will take you to the initial source. As you will see, these pieces are still being made as people remember “the disappeared” (los desaparecidos).
Just as they went unrecognized as revolutionaries, the arpilleristas were also unrecognized as artists. This, along with the folk art appearance of their work, initially helped them remain under the military authorities’ radar. Exporting arpilleras became illegal once they were seen as anti-Chilean, but they continued to be smuggled out of the country.
Bold lines and colors relayed powerful messages depicted in folk-like scenes. An arpillera of a woman dancing signifies how women now performed the national dance La Cueca alone with the fate of their husbands unknown. Other images depict military violence, bloodshed and armed figures.
The arpilleras were made during clandestine meetings in dark basements or churches. The sewn testimonials of suffering were sold by the women so that their messages were released into the world and so they could feed their families.”
Yesterday I gave a talk at Unravel: A Festival of Knitting in lovely Farnham. I talked about how you can make craftivism your own and help other people with it. During the talk, I noted that I would be placing links to what I was talking about here, so here we go.
In some cases, I’ve linked directly to a person’s work or to a news article, rather than the actual site where I got the photo from.
Weren’t there? Well, you can watch the clip below for a 6-second version or investigate any of the links below! (Disregard -or rock out to- the coffee shop music in the background!)
Welcome to Week 3 of 48 Weeks of Historical Craftivism! This week we have a lovely guest post by the lovely and amazing Sayraphim Lothian.
Craft Activism – the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp
Protesters ring the Greenham Common fence decorated with handmade banners and other items (date unknown)â€
On the 5th of September, 1981, the Welsh group Women for Life on Earth arrived at Greenham Common, an RAF Airbase in Berkshire, England. The group intended to challenge the decision to situate 96 Cruise nuclear missiles at the site, and presented the Base Commander with a letter requesting a debate on the topic. The letter stated, amongst other things, “We fear for the future of all our children and for the future of the living world which is the basis of all lifeâ€(1).
When their letter was ignored, they set up a Peace Camp just outside the fence. By 1982, the camp had become women only and with a strong feminist emphasis. In the following months and years thousands of women came to live and protest at the newly named Women’s Peace Camp(2), which now consisted of nine smaller camps at various gates around the base(3).
The women’s activism came in many forms, a considerable amount of it focused on the 9 mile fence that ringed the perimeter. In an interview with The New Statesman in 2007, the General Secretary for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Kate Hudson recalls “…block[ing] the gates, pull[ing] down parts of the fence, danc[ing] on the missile silos, and creatively express[ing] our opposition to the missiles.(4)â€
In the camps between raids on the base, the women spent time making banners and weaving words, symbols and items such as toys and children’s clothing, into the fence(5). The banners were created both to hang on the fence and hold in protest marches that happened regularly around the perimeter. One of the most prolific banner makers was Thalia Campbell, who started making banners to address the stereotype of the Greenham Common women.
I did decide that I was an artist and I could have been one more body around the fire but I thought ‘no’, and we were so vilified… people did think we were dirty slags, lesbians, bad mothers and all this kind of stuff, like, like they vilified the suffragettes in the early days, but the vilification was so untrue I thought we had to counter it, so that’s why I started making my banners really, to sort of use beauty and humour to put our point across, because that vilification… So that’s why I made all the banners really and to tell the story… I used to go up and put them on the fence and gradually this became a great big display on the fence.(6)
As well as banners protesting nuclear weapons, other banners (such as the one above) were created to show where the women were from, to show the media and the world that this was not a local issue.
The fence was also the focus of activism through weaving. Alongside toys and children’s clothes, which acted as signifiers of women’s ongoing everyday lived experience, in opposition to the destructive patriarchal threat within, and outside, the base(7), words, slogans and symbols such as peace signs, doves and rainbows were also often incorporated into the chain links.
A protester remembers there was a lot of weaving things in the perimeter fence – rainbows, kid art, … the whole perimeter fence was very gorgeous. There were a lot of spiderwebs in the art. Spiderwebs were a big theme – I suppose the theme of weaving something, surrounding something(8). Another theory as to why the weaving of the webs was that “Before the world wide web connected people across the world, women at Greenham used the metaphor of a spiders web to imagine global connections between peace activists.(9)â€
The webs often extended out to entangle the surrounding trees, the protesters themselves and the workmen and machinery that were sent in to remove them. A subcontractor who had driven his bulldozer in to remove a tree house stated in court “… the girls got in front of the machine. They stood there and a couple walked round [the bulldozer] with woollen string, going round and round with it…(10)†When the women were arrested and taken to court, some used the time to make webs there for installation later back at the camp(11).
The weaving was so important that mention of it made it’s way into protest songs, which were composed at the camp or modified from older songs and sung during protests, court hearings, while in prison or at home in the camp. We are the flow and we are the ebb and I am the weaver both appear in the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp Songbook, handwritten in 1983, photocopied in batches and sold to raise funds(12).
We are the flow
and we are the Ebb
We are the weavers
We are the web(13)
In 1981, at the very start of the Peace Camp, the women adopted the dragon as their symbol(14), explaining on a 1983 photocopied invitation that “The word ‘dragon’ derives from a word meaning ‘to see clearly’. She is a very old and powerful life symbol.†The invitation was to participate in The Full Moon in June Dragon Festival, where women were invited to feast and create a Rainbow Dragon together. Invitation 1 reads in part: At USAF Greenham Common, Newbury, Berkshire on the 25th June, a Rainbow Dragon will be born by joining the creative work of thousands of women… Women are making pieces of patchwork, banners, cloth paintings to join into the Rainbow Dragon for the future(15).
Three other invitations were also produced, the second of which invites women to “Dress up if you want – wear the colours of fire – make smaller dragons… believe in yourselves and know that our positive, creative energy will change the world.(16)†The visitors to Greenham that day bought patches and material from home and from women who couldn’t make it to the camp. Over the course of the day they helped sew together a 9 mile Rainbow Dragon, which then encircled the fence.
The Rainbow Dragon at Greenham Common, 1983The Rainbow Dragon at Greenham Common, 1983The Rainbow Dragon at Greenham Common, 1983
The Rainbow Dragon at Greenham Common, 1983
An article in an undated Greenham Common newsletter talks about the Rainbow Serpent from Aboriginal mythology and emphasises it as a:
‘universally-respected divinity’, a guardian of humanity, and a metaphor for menstrual cycles, and as such an important symbol for Greenham Common Peace Camp women … The Rainbow Serpent also represented ‘the dragon [that was] slaughtered by some patriarchal hero who established the present world order from which we are still suffering’. However, as a phoenix from the ashes, the dragon… is stirring from her sleep allowing, ‘the Australian Aboriginals and the American Indians, together with traditional people and women everywhere [to have] the last word(17)’
The dragon was clearly a powerful symbol for the women to create together and surround the base with and it’s nine mile length showed the world that many voices were joined as one to protest the nuclear weapons being held behind the fence.
Living conditions were primitive at Greenham Common. Living outside in all kinds of weather especially in the winter and rainy seasons was testing. Without electricity, telephone, running water etc, frequent evictions and vigilante attacks, life was difficult. In spite of the conditions women, from many parts of the UK and abroad, came to spend time at the camp to be part of the resistance to nuclear weapons(18). But the women made their protest heard, all around the world, with interventions, songs, marches, banners, costumes and craft based installations.
Ultimately, in 1991, the nuclear weapons were removed after US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which meant that the cruise missiles were taken back to America(19). The camp and the women remained for another nine years, as part of a protest against the UK Trident program, which is the ongoing operation of the current generation of British nuclear weapons(20) before leaving for the last time in 2000.
A Thalia Campbell banner on the Greenham fence (date unknown)
So… last year I decided I needed a new project for 2014. This project was to write here every week about 52 historical acts of craftivism! Then 2014 happened and then I had surgery and then all of a sudden it was… February. Hmm…
Undaunted, here goes 48 acts of historical craftivism. And since I’m busy, you’re busy, and we’ll all busy… I’m limiting myself to 2 hours a week researching said act.
Why am I doing this? Because I’ve found myself getting into the rut of hitting refresh all too often on my email, Facebook, Twitter and I need something else to do on the internet. Because this is what I’d like to do my PhD about, but am not sure if anyone would ever give me money for said PhD… So I figured, why not just do it anyway? Because craftivism is not new, just the portmanteau is. Because I want to be inspired again. Because I am healing from a stupid disorder and this is my balm. Because I want to share these stories with someone, anyone. Because, because, because of all these things and more. Because maybe over the course of these 48 weeks, someone else besides me will learn something.
Have an idea? Want to write your own #HistCraftivism post? Let me know, I’d love to have you come along on this journey with me.
And since there has been a lot written about this, here are some of the best quotes and information I’ve uncovered for you, so you can learn more.
First off, a 17-second video of Gandhi himself spinning!
Gandhi also made the following observations about the economics of Indian cotton and the systematic exploitation of Indian for her raw materials under British rule.
The industrialized countries of the West were exploiting other nations. India is herself an exploited country. Hence, if the villagers are to come into their own, the most natural thing that suggests itself is the revival of the Charkha and all it means. (Harijan,13-4-1940)
Mahatma Gandhi’s movement for charkha was aimed at building a new economic and social order based on self-sufficient non-exploitative village communities of the past. It was also a protest against growing industrialism and materialism which were making man a slave of machine and Mammon. To quote him: “The message of the spinning wheel is much wider than its circumference. Its message is one of simplicity, service of mankind, living so as not to hurt others, creating an indissoluble bound between the rich and the poor, capital and labour, the prince and the peasant. That larger message is naturally for all.”
An interesting story about the iconic story about this iconic photo from Life Magazine (more photos at link) by Margaret Bourke-White. I really like that “she had to learn to spin the wheel before she could take his photographs!”
Still interested?! Check out more about India and the History of Cotton over at the brilliant Hand/Eyehere and an interesting rundown on Gandhi and non-violence here at A Force More Powerful.
Wondering what to get your loved ones for Christmas? Or to get yourself to spurn on your “I’m going to be a better crafter this year” New Year’s Resolution? Check out Sarah Corbett’s A Little Book of Craftivism (published by the brilliant Cicada Books) here (complete with a sneak-peak slideshow of some of the interior)!
The book covers different Craftivist Collective projects and ideas along with their interpretation of craftivism. (As each group/crafter has their own interpretation of craftivism, which I think is brilliant!) Every time I see the word “craftivism” in print, I get a little squeal, and this is no exception.
While I don’t think that there are necessarily Do’s and Don’ts of craftivism, I do think that these projects will help you on your journey to (or with) craftivism, helping you see how your two hands can foment change in your world.
Want it quick like? Check with your local independent bookstore in the UK or you can buy it on Etsy (wrapped!) or Amazon (UK) and (US).
