‘Real art is that obscure dream you’re too confused to talk about even to your psycho analyst.’

 

Nadya Tolokonnikova, READ&RIOT, a PUSSY RIOT guide to activism

 

While I was reading READ&RIOT, combined with watching an episode of David Attenborough’s Micro Monsters, I dreamt about a totalitarian insect regime wherein thousands of albino eyed woodlice emerged from under their moisty stones to catch a passing group of glow worms. These lightning bugs were doing wrong by simply being themselves. I was just a bystander and I was horrified. The glow worms were not. Like cheeky monkeys they were manoeuvring between the rummaging arms and grey pincers of their attackers. Some of them were even dismembered. Even so they kept glowing. And what did I do ? I had pissed my pants. When I woke up, I carried on reading where I’d finished: at a Pussy Riot song called Putin has pissed himself.

 

Inspired by art, punk, feminism and Vladimir Putin’s endless regime, the punk-rock art collective Pussy Riot was founded in 2011. The preceding years its members had explored the genre of activism, training themselves not only to install their music equipment rapidly, but also to continue playing while cops are trying to interfere. A vital step since challenging your government with your own truth, is risky in Russia. That’s why Pussy Riot prefers to wear bright coloured balaclava’s: it offers anonymity which enables you to express yourself freely. Apart from not wanting to be seen as terrorists, their choice for bright colours is also based on the idea that humour and and irreverence are ways to find the truth. And art is, as Nadya Tolokonnikova describes it ‘a miracle-making machine.’ It’s a wake-up call for those who are sleepwalking through life. It rolls out alternative realities for those who seek meaning.

What I find most refreshing about PUSSY RIOT is that they don’t see themselves as real but as a fake punk band: it’s the concept of their art that counts, not the perfection of their craft. What has to be good is their action. Oddly enough, their performance on the 21st of February 2012 in the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, was, as Nadya puts it ‘the worst Pussy Riot action we’d done.’ They had only been performing their punk prayer Mother of God, drive Putin away for 40 seconds. Before even getting to the refrain, they were stopped by security guards. Soon after, Nadya, Masha (Alekhina) and Yekaterina (Samutsevich) were arrested.

 

With dismay the world witnessed their trial. I couldn’t help seeing it as dramatic potential for a play, knowing right away that it could never exceed the insanity of its realm. Fortunately the three women received much support from the west. One of the few artists who did speak out against them was Mireille Mathieu, who had performed for Gadaffi and Putin on a festival of military music in Moscow. Like many Russians, Mireille called their action sacrilege. It was a political, not an anti-religious statement, Nadya later declared. Even so, Nadya and Masha were sent for two years to prison, being convicted of hooliganism and religious hatred. ‘Who could have supposed that history,’ Nadya said in her final statement at the end of their trial, ‘in particular the still recent history of Stalin’s terror, would not be taught at all? It makes you want to weep, looking at how methods of the medieval inquisition reign over security and judicial systems in the Russian Federation, which is our country.’

 

If I ask Russian women about Pussy Riot, they all feel offended by their action, saying that their two- year sentence in a prison camp was justified. Knowing that Russian women lives are regulated by men and feminism in Russia is not as barefaced as it is in the west, their reaction is not a surprise.

I do believe, though, that Pussy Riot has contributed to the willingness of many Russian citizens to resist. Nowadays it is slowly becoming normal that thousands of Russians go to the streets. Not only to plead for the release of  Aleksej Navalny, but also for their freedom of speech.

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