What does it mean to be a witch in 21st-century Europe? Our new cross-border reportage tries to answer this question by looking for the granddaughters of the witches that Europe was never able to burn. The heroes of the final part include the Kraków-based artist and activist Cecylia Malik.

A mother

The blare of chainsaws, falling trunks, sawdust. This was the landscape of Polish cities in January 2017. A new law on the protection of nature, the so-called Lex Szyszko, had just entered into force, allowing for almost unrestricted logging on private plots. Beforehand, in order to cut even one tree, one had to obtain official permission. Now people started grubbing up. They did not even stop in March, when the birds’ breeding season began. It is estimated that during the six months when the law was in force, three million trees were cut in Poland.

The Kraków-based artist and activist Cecylia Malik was watching this with frustration. “My Facebook feed was filled with logging. I would go out to the street and hear saws. The nation went crazy. People were afraid that the bill would be soon withdrawn, so they were cutting in advance.” A year earlier, in protest, Cecylia had organized a performance for hundreds of people, accompanied by a public concert played on chainsaws. This time, she did not have the strength to prepare another spectacular intervention, because she had recently given birth to a son. But she had to act.

“One morning, I asked my husband to come with me to a felling,” she recalls. “Without a strategy, but with a baby, a dog and a camera under my arm. At one point, I sat on a stump, started breastfeeding Ignacy, while Piotr took a picture of us. And that was it.”

Cecylia Malik talks about Rivers Sisters. Video by Adam Barwiński

It looked like Narnia after a bu