Volunteers meditate in a “Ghost” kayak for a dream-like new film project

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A new project on Northern England called the Super Slow Way invites people to lie in a coffin-like kayak to reflect on life as they float down a canal

Super Slow Way Ghost kayak on canal
(Image credit: Jack Bolton)

Passengers are taking a unique meditative journey along the UK’s Leeds & Liverpool Canal in a specially designed kayak (that’s actually a sculpture) called Ghost. It’s a project that’s being filmed for a documentary highlighting the historic waterway’s restorative powers.

The Super Slow Way, an arts program based in East Lancashire, has teamed up with artist Adam Chodzko, who sculpted Ghost back in 2010. Adam first unveiled Ghost for the Whitstable Biennale in 2010, and since then the kayak has taken hundreds of passengers on similar journeys around the UK.

Super Slow Way Ghost kayak on canal

“Ghost is a sustained methodological process with the journey to the ‘island of the dead’ acting as a frame for the passenger’s experience of their voyage and the potential for transformation within this encounter,” says Chodzko (Image credit: Jack Bolton)

For this project (more information here), Chodzko paddles one passenger at a time along the canal in Clayton-le-Moors, filming them on their journey using a special camera rig.

The passenger lies low and flat within a cockpit towards the bows. “Like a body in a coffin with their head slightly raised, traveling along the interface between water and sky,” says Chodzko, which may sound a little macabre (and look a little bit like Waterhouse’s “Lady of Shalott” in the photos) but is designed to be a meditative, reflective experience.

As Chodzko explains, “The dome in the deck of the kayak separates them physically and visually from the paddler at the back. The paddler and passenger experience the journey in silence, in order to allow space for perception. A camera, mounted on Ghost‘s deck, records each unique voyage, the passenger’s point of view, structured as a memory or dream.”

Super Slow Way Ghost kayak plus cow

During exhibitions Ghost appears and disappears from the exhibition space in order to be used on water. It then returns to its suspended state in the gallery space, now with the addition of mud, small scratches and the traces from water droplets on its hull. The marks it accumulates from this usage act as a further record of its activity, a form of ‘drawing’ onto the body of the vessel (Image credit: Jack Bolton)

The resulting footage from this latest project will be compiled into a short film, which will receive its premiere in Hyndburn in Lancashire later this year.

As well as the passengers, for this project Ghost is also carrying a special cargo – shuttles from local mills, in homage to the canal’s original purpose of ferrying raw cotton and finished fabric in its heyday. Chodzko also believes the shape of shuttles reflects that shape of the kayak.

The project certainly wasn’t short on volunteers; all the places on both batches of journeys – from August 6 to 11, and then from August 30 to September 4 – were quickly filled.

Super Slow Way Ghost kayak showing shuttles

The shuttles from local factories being shuttled in Ghost (Image credit: Jack Bolton)
Dave Golder