‘Punk Rock is Not a Crime!’ was Amnesty International’s slogan in
support of Pussy Riot. But Western assertions of the sanctity of free
expression have been as unhelpful as the Orthodox Church and Russian
state’s putative defense of religious beliefs. The general tone of the
debate surrounding the group’s action has served to obscure the concrete
politics of the gesture. To better understand Pussy Riot’s intervention
one must examine the wider context – including the site, Russia’s
ongoing culture wars, and the relationship between the Orthodox Church
and Putin’s government.
Should young ladies be able to burst into a church and sully its sacred
pulpit through unhinged gestures and a show of bare arms? To begin to
answer this question we must ask whether Orthodox activists should be
able to storm a museum and destroy the works on display. This is what
happened at Moscow’s Andrei Sakharov museum in 2003, when the exhibition
Caution, Religion! was defiled by persons objecting to artists’
reflections upon the rise of religion in post-Soviet Russia. When the
director called the police to report the disturbance it was he who ended
up in court. Later, in 2007, another show at this location featuring
works that had been censored in numerous state exhibitions caused the
curator – a senior figure at the Tretyakov, one of the country’s most
important museums – to lose his job. It is against this background that
we must view Pussy Riot’s action as the latest salvo in an ongoing fight
for the last vestiges of civil society.
Central to this dispute is the question – what kind of art does Russia
need? It is a query that was being asked in 1917 by the avant-gardes,
and one that was answered all too finally in 1934 at the Soviet Writers
Congress, when Socialist Realism was proclaimed the official style. It
is interesting to note that, today, both Putin and the Church seem to
favour Zurab Tseretseli – the most prominent exponent of monumental
Soviet-style sculpture still working. The man who is well known for
depicting a bronze Putin in his judo uniform was also responsible for
creating the high reliefs of the Christ the Saviour cathedral, an
addition to the original decorative scheme. His is an art in the service
of official power, and a far cry from the practice of the Voina group
from which Pussy Riot sprang. Though Stalin is long dead, such echoes of
‘official’ art reverberate deeply, only faintly counterbalanced by the
oligarch-friendly baubles produced by easel painters such as Dubosarsky
& Vinogradov and the cynical realism of video works by the AES+F
group. The space for alternatives beyond this rock and a hard place is
filled by performance. With the left-wing conceptualism of Chto Delat
running a bit too dry, and the macho shock tactics of the Moscow
Actionism of the early 1990s – pioneered by Oleg Kulik and Alexander
Brener – a spent force, Pussy Riot’s politics, passion and eye for
showbiz has finally drawn media attention to one possible answer: Russia
needs art that will not acquiece to the hegemonic triad of State,
Church and Oligarchy.
Just as the Christ the Saviour Cathedral showcases work by the nearest
thing to an official state artist it also serves as a platform for the
sacralization of Putin’s government and the re-alignment of Church and
State redolent of imperial Russia. Rebuilt in 2000 at great expense to
taxpayers after its 1931 destruction at the hands of Stalin’s goons, it
now serves as the seat of Russia’s pope – Patriarch Kirill, a former KGB
general. From beneath its onion domes he has blessed Russia’s nuclear
arsenal and admonished young men to join the war in Chechnya. Perhaps
this is okay. But the church has also been profaned, some say, by its
extensive business interests in tobacco and alcohol, amongst other
lucrative areas in which it pays no tax. Patriarch Kirill wears a
$30,000 Breguet watch. ‘The Missionary's in class for cash’, go the
lyric’s to Pussy Riot’s Punk Prayer, ‘Meet him there, and pay his
stash.’
Even so, there is do doubt that Pussy Riot challenged the religious
mores of Orthodox believers by staging their performance in an area of
the cathedral in which, traditionally, only male priests may enter. But
whatever one’s views on gender-normative religious practice, the wider
relevance of the group’s feminist provocation was set into sharper focus
during the public debate that ensued. That the Deputy Prime Minister
saw fit call Madonna a ‘moralizing slut’ for her pro Pussy Riot
statements during a recent Moscow concert is but one example. The group
has clearly picked a scab from which all manner of social concerns have
begun, finally, to seep into the open.
Of course the West loves it. The ladies’ writings from prison recall the
Soviet pantheon of dissident literature. The performance may have begun
in the Cathedral but it continued – and became more sophisticated - in
the courtroom, with their grace under show trial and eloquent
statements. But whatever we may think, the West will not change Russia.
That requires citizens as a committed as the two women currently in
prison.