A Story about Pussy Riot, the Warfield, Scandal: Insanity Art Language and Attempted Censorship
On a cold February afternoon in 2012, as a few tourists and devotees milled around Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, five women, dressed in neon dresses and masks, jumped onto the altar and started to pray. But it was a very different kind of prayer, as the women — members of the group PUSSY RIOT — genuflected, bowed and punched their fists into the air, they shouted, “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out”.
Less than a minute later, police escorted them out of the church. This might have been just one more little moment in the history of Russian avant-garde protest expression ignored by the rest of the world had it not been for one significant difference — the video of the prayer was posted on Youtube. Within days, the video had over a million views.
And…..they were sent to prison.
The women of that iconographic performance were sent to prison. For daring to perform in a church. For being women on the sacred altar. For protesting the president. Let me repeat that — three of the five women, (the others went into exile), were sentenced to TWO YEARS HARD LABOR IN PRISON for one minute of artistic protest.
Radical icons were then, born. Social media and blog platforms exploded with outrage and support and celebrity endorsements. Pussy Riot — an amalgamation of many different women then and now who represent the group — had galvanized the world’s attention and they were not going to shut up. Oh hell no.
They have continued to fight for the cause in all sorts of ways and were at the Warfield in San Francisco on February 10th, 2016. On that night they had live conversation with local writer/ activist/ Russian emigre Zarina Zabrisky.
Zabrisky has been a supporter of the group long before they rose to infamy and organized a protest on the day that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced.
As I was writing a column for the SF Weekly at the time, naturally I needed to interview Zabrisky about that protest. A protest that was not widely attended as few outside of Russia had any idea that Pussy Riot existed. Soon however, soon even Madonna was on their side. Pussy Riot gained an unprecedented notoriety and in doing so, informed an unaware West how truly severe is the current situation in Russia. But yet and still many don’t truly understand what Pussy Riot is, what they stand for and from what they come.
To help remedy that situation in my own way I commissioned Zabrisky to write an article for Whore! magazine. Sadly, before the 4th issue and Zabrisky’s article could be printed, I had to put the magazine on hiatus. And there it lay fallow, a beautiful bit of writing resigned to being a computer file. That is until one foggy almost Christmas eve at a cosy soiree of champagne and music, it was decidedly decided that the article should live once more.
And it has — online. https://medium.com/@ZarinaZabrisky/scandal-insanity-art-language-f8f497e4678a#.qbazxy5sc
Partly due to the article being used to promote the Warfield event, the article went viral. It may have even have caused the Warfield Facebook page to be temporarily shut down. The reason? Explicit imagery. To be fair, the images in question are certainly shocking and NSFW. That is intentional. The images are of the activist protest group VOINA which Pussy Riot was forged from.
( Also split off from. One of their first actions after the split was to form a performance action of kissing female police officers during protests).
Two days before the 2008 election of the President Dmitry Medvedev, VOINA staged a live public orgy at the State Museum of Biology. Five couples copulated, a pregnant Nadia Tolokonnikova included, to mock what they considered to be a farcical and pornographic election (ballot boxes were stuffed). Putin had stepped down, ‘handing’ over his presidency to Medvedev only to reclaim it 4 years later having all the while directed the government from the backseat. Once back in office, Putin immediately imposed greater restrictions on public assemblies, non-governmental organizations, and the Internet. By having actual sex in front of “the Bear”,(the symbol of Russia co-opted by Putin), the message of the performance was, “in Russia everyone fucks each other over and the little president looks at it with delight.” Alexey Plutser-Sarno
So, explicit yes. Pornographic and provocative without intention - no. Regardless, Zabrisky was asked by a Warfield representative to no longer post the article to their pages. They also said, “I would be careful about posting that first article anywhere. It looks like you had posted it a few days ago and someone reported it and then they shut down our accounts, so it might be worthwhile to backtrack and remove the first article”.
Not censorship exactly. And we are all very well aware of the strange nature of how and when Facebook decides to delete accounts or report content. Zabrisky could have easily enough changed the images particularly as without context, (and even with it to a certain extent as some forms of these Russian protests can be a bit, well, not to some of our tastes), the imagery is challenging. There are others that are less full of naked flesh. Human that is, there is much chicken flesh. For instance:
But she didn’t.
And not just merely because of the irony of asking someone to remove an article about a radical performance group from sites promoting a show of a radical performance group that gained radical notoriety as a result of being censored.
Says Zabrisky, “Why would I remove it? Certainly, when the Warfield backed my articles up they were immediately read by thousands of people and it could be good for the promotion of my name and my work. It is hard for an indie press author to gain such visibility. We do not have the same funding for advertising, access to social media, and prestige as professionally run commercial entertainment enterprises. If I wanted all that I would pursue other paths in life and would seek publishing opportunities within the mainstream book industry. I looked into it and this is not for me as such a career requires a lot of compromises and mini self-censorship. I have chosen to be independent and keep my freedom to write the way I want — not office safe, PG-13 or politically correct. Basically, I don’t give a damn. If I removed my article in order to have my other articles and work promoted it would be a strange choice on my part, to say the least.
Most importantly, I agreed to be a part of this show because I respect the integrity and the sense of the artist’s responsibility and honor of Pussy Riot members, not because of their vague popularity. Most people do not know what Pussy Riot represent and the exact cause of their fame. And this is why I wrote the articles: to explain who they were and what they were fighting for. The same thing I support. Freedom. I am not giving mine away — here, there, or anywhere.”
Though Freedom is of import in all of this and at the very least this here piece, the proposed curtailing of online presence is not a simple situation of big bad company censoring an artist. Or an inimitable inhibition of freedom of speech. Not even, quite, a censure of freedom of expression. It is far more complicated than that. More meaningful possibly as it is not a situation that demands easy and righteous outrage.
A needed designation as We are ones who can go quickly to righteous outrage. By We, I mean this wide and wonderful cadre of folks who believe in freedom, human rights and justice. This belief is true and strong but we can also be quick to say, without investing ourselves in, “Je suis Charlie” or “Black Lives Matter” from the safety of our keyboards. I do not mean to dismiss that solidarity nor at all the real actions that are precipitated by these demonstrations of support but my point is that I am not writing this article to say, ‘Fuck the Warfield”. Or even, ‘fuck Facebook’.
For you see, Zabrisky was not offended. “I do not feel hurt or oppressed. In fact, I feel really lucky. You see, I am not a victim in this situation. I have choices. I have freedom to be what I decide to be.”
“This is a difference between the democratic society with the freedom of speech and the totalitarian state.”
“What happened here? A conflict of interests. The marketing company is doing its job and it is in the company’s interest to stay politically correct, office environment safe, and generally acceptable as they need to sell tickets, make profit and stay in business. Pure banal market jungles. It does not have any ideology, beliefs or hidden agenda. It is equally invested in Justin Beiber and Pussy Riot. The employees are individuals with their own political, ethical and aesthetic views and preferences. They are free to remain themselves as they take their business decisions. They offered to me to remove the article and I decided not to. There are no consequences other than they do not feature my article on their social media pages. They still promote the concert because it is their job. I still have the article out there and share it through my sources.
Let’s take this situation and place it in Russia. If I wrote an article that did not fit within the guidelines of the Russian Ministry of Culture or an organization reporting to the governmental structure — and those are inevitably at the top of all decision making and culturally significant happenings — the article would be removed. I would be silenced*.
The totalitarian state censorship as I have experienced it in the USSR while growing up and as exists in Russia today is a murderous, castrating machine that does not negotiate. If you decide to speak up, your life is at stake. In the USA, in my experience, your convenience and money are at stake, and, sometimes, your honor.”
Honor. Indeed. It took immense courage and bravery for those women of Pussy Riot to do what they did, to risk what they did, to still fight for what they believe in when confronted with imprisonment and sacrifice. For so many of us, a courage we have never been tested by. A courage I didn’t really understand until I started to do research for that article by Zabrinsky I had commissioned for the magazine and also, until I met with her. Courage she has, in spades, though she’ll demure if you say so.
But more too.
I spoke via email with Plutser-Sarno, I delved into the deep web and finally found those original images by Bocharev and asked his permission to use them for the magazine. I could not, at that time (I have since, met them), get quotes from Pussy Riot members themselves as they were in prison or in hiding. I had instead, brief Facebook messages with others near them. In doing so I found myself in unusual waters. Ones that were treacherous. Not for me but for them. It was not that they asked me to not post what they were doing. They asked instead that I get it right. Get the message right. To honor what they were doing. To give what they fought for — voice.
We seem to have so many opportunities for that here, a veritable plethora of possible platforms. But so many important voices are not heard and so many others are compromised by that very pesky predicament that Zarina mentioned — our time which is often not valued, our understandable desperate clamoring for small profit and all those subtle yet insidious forces that often determine how and what we will say. The Syrian revolutionaries used Facebook to feed it and find safe houses, I found these wonderful, defiant Russians through the internet. It is a tool dependent upon what we do with it.
My dear friend Ramesh, a man of very interesting history, has often said that the most effective way to undermine the revolution is to make it think it has an important voice and could get paid. So I want to now, honor all those who really have to fight for their voice to be heard, who fight knowing that their voice shouted out will have great risk and all the small ways in which honor and integrity can be chosen. Sometimes, it is truly and simply — a choice.
And that is why, I am writing this.
Thank you for reading. All the best to you, Ginger Murray.
- There are many laws adopted during Putin’s years in power that make censorship easy and convenient, such as the insult to religious feelings, insult of patriotic feelings, etc….
- When Zabrisky talks about ‘silencing’ she means it in the most brutal way. Possible silencing by imprisonment, or, depending on the gravity of the situation, by assasination. She wrote about Boris Nemtsov’s assassination in her article Painting in Blood in the journal Anthropology Now and the proven intentional poisoning of Alexander Livinenko by Putin’s government just made the headlines. He was not the first and he likely won’t be the last.
