It is not at all unusual to wander the halls of a museum and wish for more intensity. Every once in a while something needs to happen; everything all needs to be blown up and burnt down, and what could be more effective to this end than reactivating elements of punk history?
The Russian activist group Pussy Riot, which was founded in 2011, looked to Western punk traditions for inspiration. Group members formed an all-girl punk band, wrote suitably angry and funny punk lyrics against President Putin and performed them at flash mob-like actions. In doing so, the group became a glaringly bright yellow warning sign to us all, one which is about more than what is going on over there, far away from us.
In her interview with the Louisiana Magasin, Maria Alyokhina, who created the exhibition in collaboration with the gallery Kling & Bang in Reykjavik, makes the following statement, and we should all listen: “I don’t think everyone realises that the situation can get much worse. Other countries may be attacked. And what will you do then? Just wait and see if the war reaches your border, or what?”
Walking through the corridors of the otherwise impeccably tasteful Louisiana Museum, now taken over by the Pussy Riot exhibition Velvet Terrorism, is like taking a drug that leaves you instantly lit and flying high. I laughed my way through the first half of the show, even though there’s truly nothing to laugh about given the very real danger posed by Putin’s regime.
We are presented with a chronological review of selected Pussy Riot actions. Video screens blare out cacophonously from all the walls, which are painted in garish neon colours. The wall labels are handwritten and the twisted tape letters that spell out Pussy Riot’s name at the entrance scream out at us. It is certainly not a meditative exhibition, but then there is no time for meditation when the threat is imminent.
Velvet Terrorism – a title based on a Russian Orthodox bishop’s description of Pussy Riot – is a documentary exhibition created to incite, but also to inform. There are few real attempts to make works of art as such; most of all, the activist actions are given shape and colour here in order to attract maximum attention to the Putin regime’s will to oppression. Having said that, a few works stand out with their extreme visual power. The opening video work, the most elaborate in the entire show, sets the tone. I sensed that I was witnessing a genuinely subversive gesture. Here, a cocktail of shame and laughter bubbled up because pussy literally pisses on Putin.
The exhibition presents a handful of iconic photographs that ought to be a staple of any presentation of protest art through the ages. These include images from my top three Pussy Riot actions: Putin Peed his Pants carried out in Red Square in 2012; Punk Prayer in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012, which got three of the group’s members arrested; and the group’s confrontation with armed vigilantes during the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, shortly before the Putin regime’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. As difficult as it may be to understand, the longing for a supposedly original Russian identity has created a vigilante police force that struts around the streets dressed as Cossacks. It was some of these ghosts from the past that attacked and beat group members in Sochi. My laughter fades into horror as I ask myself: What in heaven’s name is happening?
My empathy was awakened. It is a riveting exhibition, and viewers will soon feel a bit reactionary if they try to raise objections. The fast pace, the colours, and – another point which is greatly in the group’s favour – the charisma, can result in our feeling spoon-fed a rather diffuse and blurry image of the opponents as evil and stupid. Activism is, for better or for worse, emotional politics, and active resistance requires a black-and-white view of the circumstances. Is the exhibition merely a fierce but brief fix? Anyone could be Pussy Riot, but perhaps my urge to act was vicariously satisfied so that I don’t have to be Pussy Riot on the train back to Copenhagen (slightly sleepy and sated like a fat cat)?
In the documentary film Pussy vs. Putin (2013), credited under the pseudonym Gogol’s Wives, Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich appear in one scene. They are shown giving lecture in an auditorium about the American art activists Guerrilla Girls and the band Bikini Kill, both of which were central to the 90s punk feminist underground movement in the United States. Pussy Riot has mobilised its knowledge of protest art to create its own hyper-dynamic version.
For years now, the Putin regime’s propaganda machinery has been constructing an image of original Russian identity. Here, the enemy is the LGBTQI+ lifestyle, which is presented as a Western import. This war of identity came to a head when Pussy Riot entered the stage with its 40-second punk prayer and spectacularly had to undergo a public show trial as punishment. This is not a matter of the so-called identity politics that some find so threatening, but an ideological identity war combined with state-sanctioned brainwashing. Even before the punk prayer, the thought police had already instigated a war against ‘perverse’ lifestyles and art: several galleries in Moscow had their exhibitions closed on the pretext of offended religious feelings. In Russia, the ideological brainstorming led initially to the annexation of Crimea and later to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Perhaps the Danish government is heading down the same path as far as offending religious sentiments is concerned?
Opponents of the Putin regime are being monitored and harassed, or even poisoned, as happened to Pussy Riot member Pyotr Verzilov. The pressure has become too great for most. Alyokhina and her partner are not alone in having fled Russia: members of the collective Chto Delat, which combines political theory with art and activism; the graphic artist Victoria Lomasko, who has published several books featuring drawings from the Pussy Riot trial and of LGBTQI+ life in Russia; and many others have recently left the country in a desperate hurry.
Feel free to rock out to Velvet Terrorism, but don’t forget to heed Alyokhina’s warning that Putin’s policies may have consequences for more countries than Ukraine.
