Three Pussy Riot members are currently imprisoned and awaiting trial on hooliganism charges, after they performed wearing bright-colored homemade ski masks, inside Moscow's historic Christ the Savior Cathedral in late February and belted out a protest song against church leaders' support for then candidate Vladimir Putin.


Pussy Riot : Statement in Response to Patriarch's Speech on 24/03/2012
26/03/2012

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Your Holiness, Patriarch-

A fervent and sincere prayer can never be a mockery, no matter in what form it occurs, therefore it cannot be said that we jeered at, or mocked, the shrine.

We are plagued by the thought that the very shrine, which you consider so defiled, is inseparably linked to Putin, who in very words, brought it back to the Church. And because the of our prayer, asking our Holy Mother to drive out those who defile the brightest ideals of human life in Russia and all possible precepts of the Orthodox Faith, you are perceived as a mockery of the sacred.

In prayer it is evoked that , as millions of Christians were seriously grieved that you allowed the Church to become a weapon in a dirty campaign of dirty intrigues, urging the faithful to vote for a man whose crimes are infinitely far from God's Truth. We simply cannot believe the representative of the Heavenly Father if he acts contrary to the values for which Christ was crucified on the cross. As said by Pushkin, “ It is impossible to pray for King Herod; the Mother of God forbids it.”

You were endlessly wrong in saying in your sermon that we do not believe in the power of prayer. Without belief in the power of prayer and of words, we would never have offered our prayers so desperately and fervently, in anticipation of the serve persecution that could be dealt to us and our loved ones. The repressive powers that simply waited for the right moment to take revenge on our group for our tough Civic positions we have taken with our art. The power and truth of our prayer did not shame the Faithful, for surely the faith of a true believer, as the feelings of Christ, are too deep and universal -too filled with love- to be shamed. Our prayer shamed only Putin and his henchmen, and now three women have been thrown in prison, taken away from their young children, and now daily calls for arrests and punishments are issued forth from the higher bureaucracies. It It is Putin -not a believer- who, through domination and division, needs to keep the women in jail.

You say that we believe only in propaganda, the media, lies and slander, money and weapons, but we don't have faith in any of those things, as we have no faith in anything entity equal the brute powers of King Herod. You encouraged the Russian people to vote and pray for these powers, in whose name you have tried to link with prosperity of the Russian land.
First the pervasive and false propaganda on state television wrested from the people a victory for Putin. Now, through outright falsehood opposition and detractors at least is trying to assure the people that women with young children should be kept in the custody for "for violation of the laws of the Church.” On whose side are propaganda, media, lies and slander? On whose side is the belief in money? On which side are the performers of Pussy Riot, whose lives are close to the asceticism necessary for any creative thinking? Or is the belief in money on the side of those who invested the empty values of unprecedented governmental luxury in the code of conduct for any high-ranking man? Who has faith in weapons? Perhaps those who call for the killing in the name of religious feelings? On whose side were the dozens of armed men who, shouting and wielding their weapons, commanded a raid on March 3rd, having been sent to arrest two women suspected to have been in the temple- suspected of having asked Mother of God, loudly, get rid of Putin?

Pussy Riot




Pussy Riot, offshoot of Russian anarchist art group Voina, pisses off both church and state
--deathandtaxesmag.com--
By DJ Pangburn 4 days ago


Over the last few years, Voina, a Russian anarchist art collective, has been rather busy. They’ve painted a cock on a draw bridge; thrown cats inside a Moscow McDonald’s; had an un-simulated “fuck action” in a Russian museum; and overturned cop cars. Such is their reputation that the mysterious street artist Banksy himself bailed out members Oleg Vorotnikov and Leonid Nikolayev.

More recently, an all-female Riot Grrrl offshoot of Voina, Pussy Riot, has been playing impromptu, Dada-esque punk rock shows in various public locations: Red Square, subway stations, a ritzy boutique, amongst others. But it is Pussy Riot’s most recent stunt that is attracting the most attention for the feminist group, recalling the type of response that could only come from heathen-hating Christians.

The group played inside Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox cathedral, in an area usually reserved for priests, calling on the Virgin Mary to chase Vladimir Putin away. Deacon Andrei Kurayev, whose response to the group was at once enlightened and condescending, drew the wrath of the more radical, reactionary strains of Christendom, with one member of a Christian foundation calling for “those bitches” to burn in hell. Divine.

Pussy Riot’s response? They called the church “a tool in dirty electoral intrigues,” while member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova allegedly invited the Orthodox Church spokesman Vsyevolod Chaplin to visit her in jail to debate the group’s actions.

One, of course, has to situate Voina and Pussy Riot within the context of Russia’s so-called democracy. While many artists are politically-neutered or spade, so to speak, Voina and Pussy Riot put their lives on the line with their radical art and calls for liberty. Their work preceded both the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, and one could seriously argue they helped give birth to a new radical sentiment in Russia. It’s art at it’s finest: something worthy of early 20th century art movements like Dada, Surrealism and Futurism.

Meanwhile, the group’s supporters are protesting the detainment of and possible charges against two group members, Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, with signs emblazoned with the beautiful double-entendre, “Free Pussy Riot.”

For radical art and politics, the means of communication could not be any more sublime. And I’ll be damned if Pussy Riot isn’t the most interesting band in all the world. Not one American band would have the, well… ovaries to do this work.