It seems that the recent activity of certain, now former members of the activist band Pussy Riot have resulted in their release or dismissal. Just hours prior to the appearance of Masha and Nadya at the Amnesty Human Rights Home Concert in Brooklyn, other still anonymous members released a statement via their Livejournal.
The short of it: recent public appearances made known formerly unidentified members. The activists had been known for remaining unknown and took pride in this ideal of avoiding “personality cult”. The letter continued on to say that these now public personalities have gotten carried away with new purpose, abandoning founding principles. These include; feminism, separatist resistance, fight against authoritarianism and the above mentioned personality cult. They then expressed frustration with the fact that these two rouge members were continually referred to as current contributors. The reality of the situation is that the blatant and overt commercial use of the band’s name stands in extreme contradiction to the leftist anti-capitalist ideology that they represent. While no love was lost and respect given to the endeavors of these two women the message was very clear… they are no longer welcome.
Their statement was as follows:
We are very pleased with Masha’s and Nadya’s release. We are proud of their resistance against harsh trials that fell to their lot, and their determination by all means to continue the struggle that they had started during their stay in the colonies.
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, all of which, as a matter of fact, was the cause for their unjust punishment.
Moreover, instead of the names of Nadya and Masha, the poster of the [Amnesty International] 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 Pussy Riot collective: We are all-female separatist collective–no man can represent us either on a poster or in reality. We belong to leftist anti-capitalist ideology–we charge no fees for viewing our art-work, all our videos are distributed freely on the web, the spectators to our performances are always spontaneous passers by, and we never sell tickets to our ‘shows’.
Our performances are always ‘illegal’, staged only in unpredictable locations and public places not designed for traditional entertainment. The distribution of our clips is always through free and unrestricted media channels. We are anonymous, because we act against any personality cult, against hierarchies implied by appearance, age and other visible social attributes. We cover our heads, because we oppose the very idea of using female face as a trademark for promoting any sort of goods or services.
The mixing of the rebel feminist punk image with the image of institutionalised defenders of prisoners’ rights, is harmful for us as collective, as well as it is harmful for the new role that Nadya and Masha have taken on.
via Pitchfork
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