For most people, the headlines about the trial of three women who are members of the Russian punk rock collective called Pussy Riot were a source of sniggering, mostly because people thought hearing their favorite news anchor say the word “pussy” was kind of hilarious.
For artists, free speech nuts, and intellectuals around the globe, the trial, its defendants and the subsequent verdict, have become a cause celebre. The trial seems to be a throwback to the Soviet-era tactics in which dissidents, particularly artists, were to be silenced at all costs, and made an example of to deter others from following suit. Political wonks among us fret that this signals that Vladimir Putin is drifting back to his KGB roots and tightening his grip on the fledgling democracy that is Russia.
Everyone is busy being indignant and horrified at the injustice.
These women are objects of an absurd inquiry that constituted a hugely disproportionate response to the purported crime committed. But to focus too much on the pathos of the situation is to miss a very important question: why isn’t this happening more?
Members of the Guerilla Girls, in many ways the art world’s precursor to Pussy Riot, in discussing the whole issue with the New York Times, said that “We live in a very different culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we want.”
The statement rings false for me on a number of levels.
The first thing that stands out to me is the assertion that “we can pretty much do what we want.”
Imagine for a moment if a band of masked women burst into a fundamentalist Baptist church in Texas and broke out into a 40 second performance of a song whose words were essentially “Jesus, please help us get rid of Governor Rick Perry.” They would most certainly be arrested (provided, of course, one of the congregation bearing a concealed firearm didn’t shoot them first.) They would be charged with trespassing, and political pundits on every news station of every stripe would engage in endless fretting over the incident.
Most likely the artists involved would not get jail time, but they would get fined. There is a very small chance that the pastor of the church, in a fit of actual Christian sentiment, would forgive them and refuse to press charges. That would not stop the media frenzy, however. Many of the same accusations that were levied against Pussy Riot would likely get trotted out against these women as well – that they were mentally unbalanced, anti-Christian, hysterical, and if they had children, they would be accused of being bad mothers. They would be accused of being anti-American and quite possibly of being terrorists.
Is this really being able to “do what we want?” Aside from the jail time, which granted, is not insignificant, there’s no substantive difference between the hypothetical (yet very likely) scenario I just described and what happened to Pussy Riot.
But what I find so insidious about what the Guerilla Girls had to say about the trial and verdict is not so much about Pussy Riot, but the comparison to current American culture saying that art is “less dangerous” here, and the tacit assumption that is a good thing.
Comfortable in urban centers like New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, many artists in this country openly worry about the conservative and provincial outlook of “red-state” America. There is much hand-wringing about how those perspectives are affecting the arts – censorship and defunding of arts institutions being the primary sources of concern. These concerns are not illusory. It was only 2 years ago that the Smithsonian bowed to pressure from religious groups and removed David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in My Belly from the National Portrait Gallery. Mitt Romney has already stated on the campaign trail that arts funding will go on the chopping block in a Romney White House budget proposal.
But the battle never seems to be really joined in any meaningful way that challenges the presumptions of the enemies of artistic expression and free speech. Sure, there are plenty of artists whose practice focuses on political statements. But with the contemporary art world so enamored of the prospect of cold, hard cash, musing over the latest auction results from Sotheby’s, and who’s going to Miami or Basel for the obligatory merry-go-round of art fairs, finding a way to challenge the status quo in a way that has any teeth seems impossible. Success and attention come from gallery shows and being featured in biennials and doing fancy residencies. Certainly artists with political imagery and messaging can participate in these events and gain fame and an audience for their cause, but it can hardly constitute agitation. Using art world venues to espouse political views widely held in the art world is really a version of preaching to the choir.
Certainly not all art has to be dangerous to be relevant. But in the case of art that intends to make a political statement, if that statement actually never reaches the eyes and ears and consciousness of an audience that disagrees with it, has the artist really done anything of import? That was the special genius of the “Occupy” movement – by placing themselves in the space where they were not wanted, and requiring those they opposed to confront their existence on a daily basis, the protestors achieved a momentum and level of attention that better funded, and better organized protest events (the “Million Man March” and the various copycat marches, for instance) simply failed to get. Whatever else one may think of the “Occupy” protests and what the movement leaders have since done with the attention and resources they amassed, the protests themselves produced a conversation about wealth and privilege and the economic future of our country that was unparalleled in modern history.
Taking on the status quo has never been an easy road. The Silent Sentinels were the first non-violent civil disobedients in the United States – standing outside the gates to the White House protesting the fact that women had no right to vote. When the U.S. entered World War I, Alice Paul, Rose Winslow and other suffragettes were arrested and sent to the Occoquan workhouse. When Alice Paul commenced a hunger strike, she was moved to the psychiatric ward and three times a day for three weeks straight, a tube was jammed into her esophagus, and used to force feed her. At one point, the superintendent of the Occoquan workhouse sent 40 armed guards on a rampage, brutalizing the 33 jailed suffragettes. The work of women like Alice Paul and the others ultimately resulted in the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote. They are but one example of the simple truth that when a person stands up for an idea, the world can change.
Ideas are inherently dangerous. An idea is a weapon of mass instruction. An idea is a sword of truth, honed to razor sharpness, as like to cut the hand that wields it as it is to injure a foe. An idea is a predator, sharp of tooth and claw. An idea cannot be trusted to lie still. It is mobile, agile and hostile. There is no empire that has ever withstood the onslaught of a powerful idea. A work of art, when it’s doing its job, is a vessel for an idea. It is an armed warhead. To assert that art is even capable of being “less dangerous” is to render it toothless, perhaps even to nullify it in its entirety.
What makes women like the Silent Sentinels and Pussy Riot so inspiring is their willingness to embrace the risk that comes from insisting upon the validity of their ideas when so many would see them silenced. This is the province of the artist, her natural state, in many respects. Yes, that the artists from Pussy Riot will serve a two-year jail sentence for expressing unpopular and dangerous ideas is a tragedy. The only greater tragedy would be to give in to the notion that as American artists, the ideas available to us for artistic exploration must be somehow “less dangerous.” An idea is a weapon of mass instruction. It is never, nor should it ever be, without teeth.
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