Pussy, actionism and petty-bourgeois ignorance

The Pussy Riot action, from the point of view of actionism as art, is an absolutely brilliant work. Judgments such as “stupid”, “sacrifice”, “stupid trick”, “flog” and everything like that, in this case, are nothing more than philistine ignorance. Actionism itself implies radical forms using unusual public territory. Actionism is provocative, scandalous art, designed to force the authorities to act and the public to think.

From this point of view, the supergoal has been achieved, the line between the creative act and reality has been destroyed. And here it is absolutely pointless to talk about the quality of text, music, dance. The goal of an action artist is not to get his song into rotation on pop radio, which will subsequently bring in a ton of money.

So what exactly is genius?

And the fact is that they managed to create a striking contrast, in which powerful state men (backed by millions of bayonets and batons, a huge FSB apparatus, investigators, judges, the church, money) fight with all their might against three girls in funny dresses. It would look as ridiculous as if Hitler and his huge army attacked not the USSR, but the women's toilet.

This action would not have had such a resonance if the authorities had not rushed onto the scene with all their deliberate lawlessness and cruelty. In this work, two options were prepared for the authorities: to dress up in a merciful mask or show their true face. But revenge turned out to be sweeter. The authorities have shown their true face, and now they have to live with this face, so to speak.

PS When Vladimir Nabokov published his novel “Lolita”, a scandal erupted. In a letter to Graham Greene, he wrote that if he had made the heroine a boy, a cow or a bicycle, the bourgeoisie would not have blinked an eye. And the girls from Pussy Riot were certainly right when they said that if they had sung “Virgin Mary, Save Putin,” there would have been no trial. By the way, in a response letter Green wrote to Nabokov that for this wonderful novel “you can go to prison in England. But you can’t think of a better reason for this.” Of course, this does not mean that the zone is a suitable place for young women who are innocent of any criminal offenses. All sensible people should continue to fight for their liberation, and for one thing, stop repeating the bourgeois mantras about “stupid” and “stupid trick.”