Sunday, November 21, two members of the collective that make up infamous Russian punk band, Pussy Riot, sat down with NYU Global Liberal Studies professor, Carley Moore to discuss art, activism, feminist politics, and Russian media censorship. To begin the conversation, Pussy Riot's manager played a section of their upcoming doc called "Act and Punishment" which follows the women through their journey of organizing for protest art actions to the actual act itself.
Masha, one of the original band members in the group was doing environmental activism when Pussy Riot was first getting started, by way of "classical protest," as she called it, canvassing, petitioning, along with other grassroots tactics that come to mind when we imagine an activist. Sasha was just finishing high school when she was hired by Pussy Riot to follow them to their protest actions and document for them what happened. Since then, both women have founded an independent media company in Russia called Mediazona.
Founded in 2014, Mediazona is run by a team of just 17 journalists who cover human rights and human rights violations, especially prison stories. Sasha explains that a focus on political prisoners, prison suicides, prisoners who have cancer, AIDS, and other incurable diseases are crucial since prisoners are not given access to proper medication and suffer inhumanely. She calls out against the general public's opinion that prisoners do not deserve to be treated with care simply because they committed a crime. The importance of an independent news organization to counter the state run news was perfectly explained by Sasha, "if we do not publish and spread all of this information then no one will know about it."
In Russia, there is an organization that censors media and has a ban on the word "suicide." As this is something Mediazona believes to be incredibly important to cover, they have to be creative in how they report suicides or they will be shut down. Sasha tells us that the way they get around this is by using the name of this government organization in place of "suicide" which she says gets the people who censor media upset. But because they technically are following the rules, they won't be shut down.
Masha and Sasha also tell us of the agency of media investigations or "fabric of trolls" as they are referred to by Mediazona journalists. This government agency writes fake news and then reposts it hundreds of times so that it becomes the top story on Russia's top search engine. This is largely how the government controls what its people know. Sasha says that "they are providing hatred" and that these fake news stories often lead to offline violence against LGBT people as well as activists. She points out the connection between what has happened in the United States since Trump's election (hate crimes) and warns us not to dismiss the power of alt-right media.
Both Masha and Sasha are deeply invested in Russian contemporary art, which they point out was widely celebrated until Putin's election. They see their own activist art, through Pussy Riot, as a kind of turning point in the way artists were treated in Russia. Before artists had been celebrated for their ingenuity and now they are being put on trial and put in jail.
Sasha concluded the audience Q&A with some advice for Americans who have been let down and are scared of what will happen once Trump is inaugurated, "What is more important than the government is the community... the government may change... and we do not know what will come next so the community should stay close and stay together."
