ABSTRACT
The visibility of Pussy Riot resulted from an intersection of the physical and the digital, i.e., from the use of physical space and new media. This distinct online-offline choreography follows the pattern that is characteristic of flash mobs: they also emerge at the intersection of new communications media, through which they are organized and promoted, and physical space where they take place (Molna´r 2013). Analyzing the physical part first, the venue of the performance was crucial, for whatever happened in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior would have become news (Pussy Riot’s earlier appearances had not elicited comparable reactions). Sixty-seven percent of Russians named the Church the institution they trust (RCSPO 2013), and having played a “prank” on its liturgy, religious symbols, and sacred meanings, Pussy Riot exploited the social capital of a prestigious institution and a very visible space. Artistically, their act drew on the tradition of urban performances that dates back to the early twentieth century: the idea of bringing playful and subversive acts into streets and public places and the “guerilla tactics” of appearing one moment and disappearing the next was put forward by Italian futurists. This tradition was later picked up by Dadaists and other avant-garde and countercultural movements (Molna´r 2013), and then by second-wave feminists, contemporary culture jammers, and post-Soviet actionists. Urban performances were sometimes devised as a convergence of radical art and political Marxism-an obvious case would be Bertolt Brecht with his “new dramaturgy”—as revolutionary agitators, who preached countercultural rebellion, aimed at eliminating the very line between art and politics. The idealistic goal of such agitation was to incite a popular revolution in which an urban underclass would pour into the streets in the powerful strife of a riot, a pogrom, mutiny. Indeed, “rebellion, pogrom, mutiny” were the words that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova used to explain the meaning she ascribed to the foreign word “riot” used in the group’s name (“Dopros” 2013).
