Space for the artist

Peter Pavlensky was placed in a pre -trial detention center for a month. Report "Medusa"

The Tagan court of Moscow arrested for a month the actor-acting artist Peter Pavlensky for the arson of the doors of the FSB building in the center of the capital. The artist himself calls this an action “Lubyanka’s burning door”; According to the plan, she was supposed to become a "slap in the face, a glove of a terrorist threat." At the trial, Pavlensky asked him to judge him for terrorism - as the Crimean director Oleg Sentsov and Anarchist Alexander Kolchenko. In August 2015, they were found guilty of organizing a terrorist community, and one of the episodes of their “terrorist” activities was the arson of the door of the United Russia office. Nevertheless, the Tagan court refused to retrain the case, and Pavlensky fell silent in protest. At the meeting, at the request of Medusa, says Novaya Gazeta correspondent Natalia Zotova .

Journalists and the artist’s support group lined up in predictably a huge line before the court. “It reminds me of how I was driving cockroaches here, excuse me,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova laughed in the queue of Pussy Riot. In 2010, the verdict was read out to the organizers of the exhibition “Forbidden Art”. The art group “War”, in which Tolokonnikov was then consisted, released three thousand Madagascar cockroaches into the building.

"Is he probably sitting there now?" - asked Tolokonnikova Oksana Shalygin, the wife of Peter Pavlensky; She pointed to the second corps of the court. - And they will lead him through the corridor, through the general entrance? " Tolokonnikova in paints described her camera for the defendants: “Such a grotto, and all shit on the walls, so that no one wrote anything on them.”

There were many indoor flowers in the courtroom. Half of the support group, squeezing into the hall, was sitting under a sprawling tree - a personal chair was allocated for a tub. To put Pavlensky’s wife, I had to borrow a bench from the table, at which representatives of the investigation were supposed to sit down, but they were all gone.

Photographers and television operators for three hours stood in front of an empty cage of the most important. “I felt like a monkey,” Tolokonnikov again shared her experience: in this court she was elected a measure of restraint already in the case of dancing in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. - We just started to laugh: the second batch of photographers, the third, and everyone comes in with the cameras, everyone clicks again. And then your ringing photos will use all the media, and everything will decide that you are completely ******* [crazy]. So you are sitting, trying to keep a serious face. "

The first action of Pavlensky - the “seam”, when he sewed his mouth - was dedicated to Pussy Riot and the trial of them. She learned about the existence of Pavlensky Tolokonnikov being in jail.

The court was appointed at 15:00, but the artist was brought into the hall about six. His wife climbed onto the bench and waved his hand. The bailiffs cursed. Behind the backs of the photographers, nothing was visible, and Oksana Shalygin looked at her husband through the screen of a tablet of one of the journalists raised above the crowd.

Usually the defendants are not allowed to communicate with relatives or press, but this time the bailiffs calmly allowed journalists to ask Pavlensky questions.

- How are you?

- Great. He got enough sleep, - the shareholder just answered.

- Why did you decide not to run away?

- Why? I think you can go out with the poster, but you can get up with the canister, - Pavlensky was calm.

Friends of Pavlensky praised the photo from the venue of the action. “The canister is only dark,” the artist from the cage complained.

He said that on Monday he came to him, as he put it, “bulls” without a form, threatened with the 317th article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: an encroachment on the life of law enforcement officials. It turned out that the article “Vandalism” is easier, up to three years in prison. Pavlensky is familiar with this article: he is now judged in St. Petersburg for the Freedom campaign, when he lit up the tires on the low-adultery, “reproducing” the Kiev Maidan.

At the very beginning of the meeting, Pavlensky took the floor. It was taken - the judge said that now is not the time, but the artist did not let himself stop. “I am very flattered by the wording in the criminal article - based on political hatred. It is strange to experience some other attitude to the organization of executioners, Lubyanka, who keeps 146 million people in fear. But the fact is that the burning door, its arson - I remind you, is the reason for the condemnation of the “Crimean terrorists” [Sentsova and Kolchenko]. In the logic of your law enforcement system, I think that a burning door is terrorism. ” It was under this article that Pavlensky asked him to judge. In the meantime, his demand is not fulfilled, he declared the "Rules of Silence." This means that he will be silent and not respond to any demand of the judge. In the same way, he behaves at the trial in St. Petersburg.

But his lawyer Olga Chavdar gave in court a whole art history lecture. “I would like to convey to the court what actionism is so that the court does not perceive the artist as a criminal,” she said and read the vocabulary definitions of the terms “Promotion” and “Performance”. She described the tasks of contemporary art and listed the previous shares of Pavlensky, when he was wrapped naked in a prickly wire near the St. Petersburg Stattering building, nailed himself behind the scrotum to the paving stones of Red Square, cut off his earring. “The artist,” the lawyer argued, “should not be responsible for the disapproval of his work by the police or the court.”

The police officer who insisted at the arrest said that “this talented artist” was already taking place from the place of subscription about the wizard (in St. Petersburg) and continued to commit crimes, although he was under trial. Therefore, he must be arrested.

The judge asked Pavlensky if he wanted to speak out, but he really did not even look at her. The judge quickly read the documents, from which it became known that the FSB appreciated the “double -barrel input block” at 63 thousand rubles. Then she retired to the deliberation room and returned with the decision to arrest Pavlensky for a period of one month - until December 8.

“The action continues. All reactions to her are also part of her, ”the artist’s wife later explained at the entrance to the court. “The artist is introduced into the fabric of reality, puts himself in another context.”

Natalia Zotova

Moscow