Nadya Tolokonnikova from the Russian punk music and protest group Pussy Riot joins MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the similarities and differences between President Trump and Vladimir Putin and to share her advice for the American resistance.
Showing posts with label Pussy riot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pussy riot. Show all posts
Friday, November 10, 2017
Nadya of Pussy Riot on MSNBC
Wednesday, March 29, 2017
Friday, October 28, 2016
Nadya, Pussy Rioting again!
"Make America Great Again"
#PussyGrabsBack #NastyWoman (!) Because YOU decide elections and if we get together, we could blow this shit up, take action and reverse this erosion of rights. Because fuck it.
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Written passionately by Ricky Reed, Nadya, Tom Peyton
Produced by Ricky Reed
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Music video is directed by Jonas Akerlund
Style: B Akerlund
Make up : Ozzy Salvatierra
Hair : Patricia Morales
Special effects make up : Jerry Constantine
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Be Pussy Riot. It's fun.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/pussyrrriot
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nadyariot/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wearepussyriot
Join Lady Parts Justice: http://www.ladypartsjustice.com/
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What do you want your world to look like?
What do you want it to be?
Do you know that a wall has two sides?
And nobody is free?
Did your mama come from Mexico
Papa come from Palestine
Sneaking all through Syria
Crossing all the border lines
Let other people in
Listen to your women
Stop killing black children
Make America Great Again
Could you imagine a politician
calling a woman a dog?
Do you wanna stay in the kitchen?
Is that where you belong?
How do you picture the perfect leader
Who do you want him to be
Has he promoted the use of torture and killing families
Let other people in
Listen to your women
Stop killing black children
Make America Great Again
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Nadya of Pussy Riot
Song Straight Outta Vagina inspired by the idea that
‘female sexuality is bigger than any populist megalomaniac’
from The Guardian
Pussy Riot have released a song celebrating the vagina, in an unashamed feminist riposte to Donald Trump and his boast that when he meets beautiful women he “grabs them by the pussy”.
The Russian punk band’s latest video Straight Outta Vagina, released on Tuesday, features Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova wearing white clerical robes and trademark balaclava, plus a chorus line of men and women sitting in toilet cubicles and standing at urinals. There is also an inflatable duck.
In typically provocative style, the video includes the lyrics: “If your vagina lands in prison, then the whole world’s going to listen.” And: “Don’t play stupid, don’t play dumb, vagina’s where you’re really from.”
Tolokonnikova said she recorded the song in February with the US musician, guitarist and producer Dave Sitek, whom she described as “one of the biggest feminists I’ve ever met”. The video was shot in Los Angeles.
Tolokonnikova said Sitek was inspired by her phrase: “Does your vagina have a brand?”. “So it made total sense to write a song which celebrates [the] vagina with him,” she said.
“This song could be considered an answer to Trump. But I believe the idea of powerful female sexuality is much bigger than any populist megalomaniac man … Vagina is bigger than Trump.”
Pussy Riot are expected to release two more videos commenting on both US and Russian politics as the band respond to the growing influence of populism and nationalism.
Tolokonnikova said the spread of “patriarchal and misogynist ideas” was akin to sexually transmitted disease. “Politicians are praising ‘strong leadership’. Trump openly supports the authoritarian methods of Vladimir Putin. And it’s scary. It’s not the world in which I want to live.”
Tolokonnikova is no longer working creatively with Pussy Riot co-founder Masha Alyokhina, who is currently touring with the Belarus Free Theatre.
The pair spent 16 months in a Russian jail following their anti-Putin “punk prayer” in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral. A third Pussy Riot member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, who was convicted alongside them, was freed early on probation and her sentence suspended.
Friday, February 5, 2016
New Pussy Riot video
Explained in the New York Times
from The New York Times
Pussy Riot Video Mocks Russian Prosecutor Accused of Corruption
MOSCOW — Wearing police uniforms and fishnet stockings, they whip hooded prisoners and waterboard them in their prison cells. The well-made-up women gleefully throw wads of cash into the air and flirt viciously with their viewers.
The Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot sashayed back into the public eye on Wednesday with the release of a music video savaging the country’s prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika, who locked up three members of the group in 2012.
It is a black satire of the Russian criminal justice system, in which the women, playing prison guards, rap lustily about money and torture a man with hot clothes irons.
“I run the war on corruption here, or to be precise, I run the corruption,” the group’s leader, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, sings alluding to accusations of high-level wrongdoing in Mr. Chaika’s office.
Those accusations were brought by Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption activist, late last year. Mr. Navalny suggested that Mr. Chaika’s son jointly owned a luxury hotel in Greece and villas in Switzerland with Olga Lopatina, the wife of a deputy prosecutor general.
Ms. Lopatina’s previous husband had ties to a notorious organized crime group in southern Russia, the Tsapok gang. Ms. Lopatina has denied the ties and sued Mr. Navalny.
Mr. Chaika denied wrongdoing. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said he would not comment on allegations concerning the grown son of a federal official.
Ms. Tolokonnikova was one of three members of the protest group who were convicted in 2012 for performing a protest concert in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Ms. Tolokonnikova and her bandmate Maria Alyokhina served a year and nine months in prison before they were released under an amnesty law before the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Another member of the group, Yekaterina Samutsevich, had been released on parole.
In the video, Ms. Tolokonnikova plays, with a sly smile, Mr. Chaika, her old nemesis.
“I love Russia, I am a patriot, but I could live in Switzerland,” she sings.
The young women sway to the tinny rhythm, gorge on a lavish feast in a palatial setting and pout at the camera. One wears a bird mask, a reference to Mr. Chaika, whose name means “sea gull.” Ms. Tolokonnikova alternates between flapping her hands like wings and forming pistols with her fingers.
A framed portrait of President Vladimir V. Putin, the type that hangs in official offices here, looks down on Ms. Tolokonnikova as she eats a gold-painted loaf of bread. And there are subtle hints at life inside the zone, the Russian penal colony system, such as a checkerboard drawn on a table with spilled sugar. The game pieces are also lumps of sugar.
“Be humble, learn to obey, don’t worry about material stuff,” Ms. Tolokonnikova rhymes sarcastically.
“And son, if you do worry about material things in life, then be loyal to Putin forever, son,” Ms. Tolokonnikova raps softly. “You want to get away with murder, be loyal to your boss.”
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Pussy Riot on NPR
talking about their new song abhorring police violence
The Russian band Pussy Riot is well known for protesting the Russian government. Now the group has released its first song in English. NPR's Scott Simon talks to band member Nadya Tolokonnikova.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
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.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
I had a quick shoot with 'Nadya' and 'Masha' of PUSSY RIOT over the weekend.
After many phone calls, e-mails, and connections worn out, I finally had an opportunity to get a few minutes with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, two members of Pussy Riot, between their busy schedule, while they were here in NYC on their way to California.
I was hoping to get one last shot for my next book. I wasn't able to get the balaclava image i was hoping for, but got a couple of good ones (probably even better since I could actually see their faces), and had a nice time talking with 'Masha' and 'Nadya' about film, vegetarianism, and what happened to them at the Olympics. We got to shoot about half a roll of film (I let my son finish the roll on our way to school monday) and a couple of snaps with my digital point and shoot as well. I think i got one for the book, but you'll have to wait and see that one in September. Here are a few of the cool left overs:
checkout out their channel on YouTube Гараджа Матвеева
p.s. one of my sons' photos from the last half of the roll...
Monday, March 25, 2013
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Pussy Riot's closing statement
from BoingBoing:
Argument in the show-trial of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot -- who gave an unlicensed anti-Putin performance in a cathedral and now face harsh, Stalinist justice for daring to point out the spy-emperor's nudity -- has concluded. Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich has given a tremendous closing statement, which is a masterful summary of Russian oligarchy:The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].Olenska | Yekaterina Samutsevich closing statement at the Pussy Riot Trial
Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.
How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.
It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.
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