Pussy Riot Eric Garner-Inspired Video "I Can't Breathe" + interview

from Pitchfork:
By Jenn Pelly

Pussy Riot Enlist Richard Hell, Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner, Miike Snow's Andrew Wyatt for Eric Garner-Inspired Video "I Can't Breathe"

Interview: Pussy Riot's Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina discuss their first English-language song, Hell talks working with Pussy Riot



Inside a small room of the Long Island City, N.Y. contemporary art museum MoMA PS1, a work by Pussy Riot has been projected against a white wall on loop since October. It is their raw, vivid, masterfully-edited protest video, "Punk Prayer", the sub-two-minute clip that brought Pussy Riot to global consciousness in 2012, and ultimately sent Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina to prison.

Now, at PS1's "Zero Tolerance" exhibit through April 13, Pussy Riot's video sits alongside work by a lineage of political artists who have fought for free speech, gay rights, and equality around the world, such as Yoko Ono and John Lennon (Bed Peace), Egypt's Amal Kenawy ("The Silence of Sheep"), Croatia's Igor Grubić ("East Side Story"), Turkey's Halil Altindere ("Wonderland"), and ACT UP New York. For the first time, Pussy Riot's work has been acknowledged by a major museum for what it is: art.

Pussy Riot's liberationist art has been occasionally lost in the swarm of its surrounding discourse. But discussion of their creative output continues today with the release of a new video for a song, their first in English, called "I Can't Breathe". The piece was inspired by the murder of Eric Garner—who died last July in Staten Island, N.Y., after a police officer put him in a chokehold—and the protests against police brutality that ensued late last year in New York. Pussy Riot dedicated the video to Garner and all those "who who suffer from state terror—killed, choked, perished because of war and police violence—to political prisoners and those on the streets fighting for change." Watch below.

The single-take video, filmed in Moscow, finds Nadya and Masha buried alive while dressed in Russian riot police uniforms. Piles of dirt are chucked onto their bodies, seeping into their teeth. A second, accompanying video (also below) was helmed by Maxim Pozdorovkin (director of the Pussy Riot film A Punk Prayer), collecting footage from the protests in New York. It documents the location of Garner's death in Staten Island, and finds members of the Garner family there lighting candles and mourning.

The music for "I Can't Breathe" was recorded in New York, produced by Pussy Riot with members of Russian bands the Jack Wood and Scofferlane, as well as several American collaborators: Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Nick Zinner (bass/piano) and Miike Snow's Andrew Wyatt (electronics), whom Pussy Riot met at a party in New York in December, as well as Shazad Ismaily (drums). But the most surprising appearance is from punk icon Richard Hell—who essentially retired from music in 1984—reciting Garner's final words at the end of the song.

"I got a call from [a publicist] saying Pussy Riot wanted to meet me," Hell explained. "I was sure somebody was gaming me, like someone was going to show up at my door and throw a pie in my face." An admirer of Pussy Riot, Hell nonetheless agreed. He invited Nadya, Masha, and friends over to his apartment, which lead to the midnight-to-6 a.m. studio session.
Hell admits he had reservations about reading Garner's words. "It felt weird to speak the words of a black man killed by the police, when I'm this privileged white guy," Hell says. "At the same time, I believe in Pussy Riot. I have faith in them. I think they're for real. It's like being an actor; you trust the director. The experience really persuaded me of their righteousness. It's a privilege to contribute this minuscule amount to what they're doing, which is devoting their lives to getting justice for people who are oppressed, who are suffering."

I exchanged emails with Pussy Riot to learn more about the video, their recent work with Le Tigre's JD Samson and Johanna Fateman, and more. The responses below were translated from Russian by Shelley Fairweather-Vega and have been edited slightly for clarity.

Pitchfork: In what ways were you inspired by the recent protests in New York City surrounding the death of Eric Garner? What do you want people to learn from the protests and this video?
Pussy Riot: Several problems that have come up in the U.S. government system resemble Russian problems in a very painful way. In particular, the problem of police violence. We are interested in seeing how the American political system, which is in general more open than the Russian one, handles defects like these, and how the media and civil society can help it or force it to fix this situation.

We are convinced that right now we need to identify other countries as examples of how we can realistically implement our ideals in Russia, which one day will become more open and free. So we are prepared to suffer through problems in other countries as if they were our own. That’s why we joined the protests in New York and wrote “I Can’t Breathe.” It truly was inspired by what happened in the U.S., but it has an attitude forged in the Russia we are living in today, in which we are trying so desperately to do something useful.

In December 2014, we were recording an anti-war song cycle in studios in New York, and when the protests started there demanding a trial for the police officer who strangled Eric Garner, it didn’t take us too much time to decide to join in. We have to demand responsibility from our governments and we can never stop reminding government bureaucrats that they exist for our sake, and not the other way around. We gave those protests our support, even though we live in Russia, because police violence and death have no nationality. Dozens of people die agonizing deaths in Russian police stations, after being beaten, or tortured, or raped. We’ve experienced police cruelty first-hand. The state’s monopoly on force must be constantly monitored by society, or else that violence will get out of control.

Pitchfork: What does the dirt represent in the video?
PR: When you get buried alive, it’s a pretty dirty process. The dirt falls on your face, and goes up your nose, and gets in your mouth and your eyes. We do end up buried underground.

Pitchfork: Did any other visual artists inspire the video? What about the medium of video art appeals to you? Does it seem more accessible than recorded music?
PR: Pussy Riot always combines the audio and visual angle. We never release songs without a video, because we are convinced that music always has a stronger impact when it comes with video. Our song is a minimalist one, and it concentrates on the beat, a metaphor for the human heartbeat in the vocals. The video also aims for minimalism. We were inspired by Lars von Trier’s Dogville, where schematic asceticism, as an artistic approach, is really perfectly implemented. Also Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, which depicts cruelty so forcefully, and that is something that stays in the art, in the last shot, with the cameras floating upward and around in a circle. One of our goals was to show that this grave is located in no particular place. It could be anywhere. So our decisions about color—with a dark, somewhat mystical picture—are definitely the result of David Lynch’s influence. We’re big fans.

The idea of a single take is important to us. We think that is the most honest way to reduce the distance between the viewers and the people getting buried. We aren’t film directors or cinematography people. We are students of conceptual art, so each element of our video had to contain aesthetic value and also be a conceptual element. The label on the pack of cigarettes you see at the start of the video reads “Russkaya vesna,” or “Russian spring” [a term referring to Russia's aggressive militant actions in the Ukrainian war zone in 2014]. That’s not just a label. It’s the ideological construct that made Russia the way the world sees it now, burying itself and its freedom alive.

Pitchfork: Did you make any musical contributions to the song?
PR: We contribute what we can to creating the music. Some of us know how to bang on the table in rhythm, some of us do a good job catching and passing on the mood of the music, and some of us can even play instruments.

Pitchfork: How did you come to collaborate with Richard Hell, Nick Zinner and Andrew Wyatt? Why did you decide to work with white male artists on a song/video about systemic racial oppression?
PR: We went to New York with musician friends of ours from two Russian groups, Jack Wood and Scofferlane, and they also played a decisive part in creating the song: Sasha from Jack Wood is the lead vocalist, and Matvei from Scofferlane, who put together the idea for the composition and the text, also sings in the refrain.

We obviously knew about Richard Hell’s work before we met. He’s the first punk in the history of punk. It was very straightforward getting to know him. We went to visit him, and after an hour we asked, “Richard, would you like to help us record a song?” And he said, “OK, I’ll try.” Only after he arrived at the studio did we tell him that the song was dedicated to Eric Garner and we wanted him to recite his last words, because we thought that nobody else could do that like he could, honestly. He agreed.

We met Nick Zinner and Andrew Wyatt before we recorded “I Can’t Breathe,” during a rehearsal for the song “Deceptacon” by Le Tigre, which Sasha from Jack Wood sang at the Vice party. We were amazed by how responsive and patient those musicians were in devoting their time to us. The night we recorded that song at Shahzad Ismaily’s studio became a very important one for us. We realized that when it comes to freedom, protests, and the value of a single human life, people from different continents can all speak the same language.

Pitchfork: You also recently collaborated on music with JD Samson and Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre. What was that like?
PR: We recorded two pieces, punk and electronic with some references to computer games. One of those songs is coming out very soon. We still need to make the video for the other one. We’re thinking about using animation. We’re big fans of animation, especially "South Park", which we love and we think is politically important. We want to continue experimenting with getting a handle on new video genres, and in that sense we’re very open to collaboration.

Pitchfork: It seems like the idea and practice of Pussy Riot has evolved so much in the past year. What have you learned about yourselves as artists and activists since 2012?
PR: We realized that even in prison, life goes on, and you can make new discoveries even sitting behind bars. We learned a lot about people while we were in jail. They took our masks off in court in 2012, and even though it doesn’t fit in with the original concept of the group, now the world knows our faces, not just our ideas and our texts. On the one hand, that removes a certain degree of freedom. But on the other hand, you come to be better understood, because most people do want to see the face of the person they’re talking with.

Pitchfork: How would you describe the philosophy of Pussy Riot in 2015?
PR: We were convicted in 2012, and they let us out in 2014. It was hard to adapt. We left in a year full of hope for political change, and came back in a year of war, with the closing of independent media outlets and the blatant hounding of the opposition. We wanted to scream in despair, but it took us a long time figure out the shape that scream needed to take. Now, finally, we think we’ve found it, with the song and video for “I Can’t Breathe.”

2015 is just beginning, and it’s laughable to make long-term plans in this unstable political reality of ours, when a brick or riot-police club could land on your head at any moment. But we’re currently recording our anti-war cycle of songs and videos and we hope that sometime in 2015 you’ll be able to see what we’re working on right now.

Pitchfork: In the past year, you have shown work at MoMA PS1 and appeared at an event celebrating Vice's 20th anniversary. How do you view cultural institutions? Do you still consider yourselves to be punk artists? What does the word “punk” mean to you now?
PR: After getting out of jail, we founded two new institutions ourselves: an NGO called Zona Prava and an independent media outlet called MediaZona, employing more than 15 people full-time. So it’s not quite right to talk about Pussy Riot as people opposed to institutions.

A punk is someone who knows how to ask the world uncomfortable questions and does everything possible to make sure the world can’t cop out of answering those questions. A punk is a person who lives and breathes astonishment. Astonishing other people and astonishing yourself—that’s what art is for us, and without art, life can’t exist, it would be too boring. A punk is always ready to rethink the idea of what is normal, and again, first and foremost, rethink their own ideas. And if you need to use institutions to make sure the world doesn’t cop out, we’re going to use them.