PUSSY RIOT IS COMING!

On February 10th, 2016 I am talking to Pussy Riot at the Warlfield theater in San Francisco.

In spite of a strangely popular belief, I did not bring them to America. I do not have free tickets. I also do not tell them where to go visit next, whom to invite to perform with them or what to say. (I don’t even tell my own children things like this; leave alone a couple of the most independent and rebellious women in the world.) I have never met them. I don’t know them. They, most probably, have never heard of me until now.

So why me “in conversation”? Well, I did put together a protest in San Francisco during the Pussy Riot trial in 2012.

With my friend, writer and musician Jesus Garcia Angel, by the front entrance of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco, August, 2012.

More importantly, being a writer, I gave several interviews (SF Weekly, Rumpus, Wired, etc), wrote a few articles and a couple of stories about Pussy Riot and the Art Protest movement in Russia. A lot of my short stories deal with the lack of freedom and many take place in Russia or in San Francisco. This is probably why the American tour managers invited me to host Pussy Riot in San Francisco.

Also, I have to face the truth. The last three years I have been an unlikely and reluctant activist. Not by choice — by choice I sit in my room writing, reading five books at the same time and go nowhere; no, by necessity. Call it inner necessity, if you must, as per Kandinsky, but necessity it is.

As the country I have left almost twenty years ago was turning into a bad parody of the USSR with hints of the Third Reich, I simply could not sit in that beautiful, book-jeweled room of mine. It was a matter of personal honor to raise my voice for those who were silenced back in Russia. I always believed that a writer is not an entertainer or a seller of printed matter; a writer has shamanic obligations — to heal and protect the tribe from evil.

It is all too obscure and irrational for a Medium article about the Art Protest history so I am not going to delve in it. If you get it — cool. If you don’t — well, also cool. Read my books. Write to me, I am on Facebook. I will engage in passionate correspondence about the lot of an artist with you. Or just ignore the shamanic thing.

What I am trying to say here in this most non-article language is that I wrote a bunch of, well, article-like material about the resistance in Russia. Because these matters concern me. Questions, like:

How can you be in opposition and not become a part of the system? How can you resist without reinforcing the power position? How can you be not just against the system but OUTSIDE of it? All those Matrix questions.

I have come to the conclusion that the only way to do it — without compromising the idea from the very start — is to speak the language of the arts. Poetry, music, painting, dance, all those tribal chants skip the tired shortcuts of system-speak and explode the emotions and instincts into catharsis. Boom! A human is flown into outer space, a free shining space outside of the system. I think.

I’m looking forward to talking about the Art Protest with the Pussy Riot members. I want to hear their opinion. I hope that what I learn can be applied to The Arts Resistance actions and events (I co-founded the collective The Arts Resistance for these particular reasons.) If you have questions — write to me, send them to me. I want them! Let’s converse.

Meanwhile, feel free to read the articles about Pussy Riot and the movement with some background information and my (extremely subjective) point of view on the Arts Protest.

1. Scandal: Insanity Art Language (WARNING: GRAPHIC NSFW IMAGES AND LANGUAGE — we are talking about punk protests and extreme circumstances, without any censorship (we are in America, fortunately!))