Photos via Amnesty International
At the press conference that preceded Amnesty International's Bring Human Rights Home Concert at Brooklyn's Barclays Center last night, a reporter asked a question that visibly rankled the two guests of honor, Nadia Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina of the Russian punk feminist collective Pussy Riot. (This was not the first time since they'd been freed from Russian penal colonies in late December that a journalist's questions have rubbed them the wrong way.)
Crowded onto a small stage, Nadia and Masha were flanked by mop-topped Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips (hair sculpted into zany disarray, sparkly heart stickers dotting his temples), and baby-faced neo-soft-rockers the Fray; a few hours later on the Barclays stage, Madonna (one of Pussy Riot’s most famous supporters) would introduce them to a crowd of thousands. In prepared statements and with the aid of a translator, Nadia and Masha spoke of their plans to tour prisons internationally and then shift their focus to advocating for penal reform back at home. They also urged Americans to “boycott” the Sochi Olympics (either actively, through protests; or passively, by refusing to watch). When the floor opened to questions, though, one reporter took the conversation in a different direction: Since Pussy Riot has said many times that it was influenced by countercultural movements and underground music—riot grrrl and oi! punk in particular—why did its members suddenly want to align themselves with a "pop cultural" performance like the Amnesty Concert? There was a tense pause. Then, with a knowing smirk that is becoming as iconic to this generation of young feminists as Kathleen Hanna's ponytail was to a previous one, Nadia said, "That question is insulting to all the musicians up here."
A few hours later, as I was wafting away the smell of overpriced nachos and struggling to stay awake through a somnolent, message-less set by human bronzer explosion Colbie Caillat, I checked my phone and saw an email titled "An Open Letter From Pussy Riot." I questioned the source at first, but it came from an address I recognized and trusted from when I had interviewed two anonymous members of the collective this past summer. "We are very pleased with Masha and Nadia's release," the letter said. "Unfortunately for us, they are being so carried away with the problems in Russian prisons that they completely forgot about the aspirations and ideals of our group—feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and personality cult." It went on to critique the very concert I was attending: "The poster of the event showed a man in a balaclava with electric guitar, under the name of Pussy Riot, while the organizers smartly called for people to buy expensive tickets. All this is an extreme contradiction to the very principles of [the] Pussy Riot collective: We are [an] all-female separatist collective—no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality... We charge no fees for viewing our art-work,... and we never sell tickets to our 'shows'." (Read more of the letter here.)
I looked back at the stage when I'd finished reading. Clad in an impressively spangly pantsuit, Susan Sarandon was giving a speech about Amnesty prisoners of conscience who had been incarcerated for their beliefs and, in prison, "denied their basic rights." "Water!" a vendor yelled from the next section over with perfect though unwitting comic timing, reminding us that a basic human right encased in a plastic bottle that will take 400 years to decompose could be ours for a cool $4.50.
After reading the letter, I felt an overwhelming sense of frustration—directed not necessarily at anyone in particular (OK, yes, maybe at Colbie Caillat) or at either "side" of this rift, but at the way I feared this information would be covered by the media. “Nadia and Masha Kicked Out of Pussy Riot for Appearing at a Star-Studded Pop Concert!” “Feminist Collective Torn Apart By Infighting, Just Like Riot Grrrl Before It!” Though the letter’s message was complicated and its tone was largely supportive of Nadia and Masha as they embarked on their new chapter as prison reform activists, I knew the pull quotes and headlines would come from the lines that revealed tension and scanned as “conflict.” It felt particularly disheartening, with the recent, internet-fueled resurgence of the old feminist-on-feminist crime known as “trashing.” Ye Olde Catfight Narrative, Xeroxed into blurry infinity.
And yet, what to make of this? I was wondering that all night, as the lead singer of harmlessly affable Cali rockers Cake took the stage in a t-shirt that shrugged, “Killing People Is Rude,” up until the long night’s end, when the Flaming Lips closed with a visually dazzling but apolitical set featuring their cover of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Pussy Riot stayed on my mind. In the perceived conflict between the collective and Nadia & Masha, who is wrong? Who is "right"?
These are not necessarily the questions we should be asking.
As their story has unfolded, Pussy Riot have struggled (and, largely, succeeded) to keep the ideals of the group from getting lost in translation—whether that means shooting down tone-deaf questions about the net worth of their “brand” to taking a stand against a Pussy Riot-inspired Ikea ad. All throughout, Pussy Riot have grasped for a language that communicates their identity and values to a Western audience largely unfamiliar (as last night’s politically tepid bill reminded us) with the language of radicalism, feminism and dissent. “All hearts were beating for you as long as you were perceived as just another version of the liberal-democratic protest against the authoritarian state,” the political philosopher Slavoj Žižek wrote in a letter to Nadia while she was in prison, later circulated online. “The moment it became clear that you rejected global capitalism, reporting on Pussy Riot became much more ambiguous.”
Therein lies much of the confusion. Pussy Riot are not a “band” but a leaderless, radical art collective that has used punk music to spread its message. Which means that the reporting on Nadia and Masha’s apparent separation from the group should be more nuanced than “Pussy Riot break up!” or “Nadia and Masha depart, citing creative differences.” “Pussy Riot has [gone] from a group to an international movement,” Masha said last night. “Anyone can be Pussy Riot.”
The anonymous members of Pussy Riot who wrote the letter take issue with the fact that Nadia and Masha’s speech at Barclays was being billed as “an appearance by Pussy Riot,” since the pair are now acting under their own names. This is a valid point. Unlike the remaining members of the collective, though, Nadia and Masha do not believe that their advocacy for prison reform contradicts “the aspirations and ideals of the group”—especially given that they are advocating for reform in women’s prisons. This is valid too.
So is it crazy to suggest that both sides are right? That each one raises interesting points, and the “truth,” if it can be called that, might fall somewhere in the middle? That, yes, there is something inherently ridiculous about an event in a corporate-owned sports arena celebrating an anti-capitalist radical feminist art collective? But also that sometimes the only way to wake people up to political action and awareness is to get mainstream pop stars and glitter-encrusted celebrities to champion the cause? “We like what can’t be understood,” Nadia said in her trial’s closing statement. “What can’t be explained is our friend.” All Pussy Riot have ever demanded of us is to ask big, barbed questions about politics, feminism and freedom—most of which will not have clear answers. And contrary to the narrative that might emerge, this latest news changes none of that.
Madonna introduced Nadia and Masha last night—yes, against the wishes of the collective—as “Pussy Riot.” “I’d like to thank Pussy Riot for making ‘pussy’ a sayable word in my household,” Madge said, though for some the moment may have been blunted by recent news that another word is also sayable in the Ciccone home. Still, even with all of its contradictions, the moment that Nadia and Masha took the stage had an undeniable power. As too many of the sets at the Amnesty Concert reminded us last night, it can often feel maddeningly vague when musicians champion “human rights," but for young people numbed to that phrase, Nadia and Masha give faces and voices to the struggle for freedom. And yet, even unmasked, it would have been hard to make any charges of reveling in a “cult of personality” stick to them. They deflected the spotlight to their fellow political prisoners, spending most of their time on stage reading statements from the group known as the May 6 prisoners, who are currently on trial for protesting against the Putin regime. As they left the stage, Nadia and Masha lead us in a chant for them: “Russia will be free!” As it resounded to the cheap seats, that message—at least for the moment—rang loud and clear.