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Pussy Riot | This band fucking rules more than any band has ruled in years

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Pussy Riot in Red Square

I don’t know. Offer them your support, or something. Contact authorities, websites, newspapers, famous people. Pussy Riot must be “burning Putin’s glamour” pretty fucking hard for the state to threaten them like this.

From The Guardian‘s news story, Russian punks Pussy Riot arrested over Putin protest:

Russian punks Pussy Riot have been arrested over their February protest at Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral. Beginning on 3 March, the day before the presidential election that saw Vladimir Putin return to power, six band members were charged in connection with hate crimes and violations of public order.

Two of the musicians remain in custody, where they have begun a hunger strike. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhin are protesting against the conditions of their arrest, which will see them kept behind bars until a late April hearing. They both have young children: Tolokonnikova has a four-year-old son and Alyokhin’s daughter is five. The women “will starve in jail until they are returned to their children”, Pussy Riot explained on their website.

If the accused are found guilty, they face up to seven years in prison. “These citizens were taken in on suspicion of committing a crime, one involving a gross violation of public order, including inciting religious hatred as part of a planned conspiracy,” announced the government’s press service. The band members claim they were interrogated for seven hours, beginning at 4am; the investigators allegedly revealed the case was being directed “from the highest levels”, with a focus not just on Pussy Riot’s protest but on “all anti-state activities”.

From Al Larsen’s recent post around “space punk” (no, not punks wearing shiny retro space helmets; punks reclaiming public performance spaces):

What Pussy Riot is doing has something to do with rock’n’roll, punk rock, street theater, performance art, protest and flash mobs but none of those terms really hit the mark. “Interventionist protest art” would be a decent, if dull-sounding, description but the framing of Pussy Riot as a band is significant. It suggests something that anyone can get in on. Because, who knows – ? Maybe the recording industry will stop threatening to collapse and get on with it. Maybe we’ll see a new form – a blossoming of bands that dispense with “touring the album” in favor of creatively engaging the poetics of public space.

I am absolutely humbled by what Pussy Riot are doing right now with their music and performance. Ladies, you totally have our support.

Related posts:
Fucking love punk rock sometimes. Fucking love feminism sometimes. Fucking love YouTube sometimes.

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