Source: betevé
Víctor Giralt Jonama
29.01.2025
PRESS TEXT (Translated from Catalan)
The feminist punk band Pussy Riot is supported by a residency organised by Artists at Risk (AR) -Barcelona.
Thanks to the collaboration of Casal de Barri Trinitat Nova, the punk band and feminist collective Pussy Riot benefits, for three weeks, from the program of Artists at Risk Barcelona – No Callarem, which supports artists who are persecuted, threatened or fleeing war and terror.
Thanks to the residency, Maria Alekhina, co-founder of Pussy Riot, Taso Pletner, and Alina Petrova are preparing their musical and performance show at Casal de Barri Trinitat Nova. The three performers are also accompanied by artistic director Kiryl Masheka and producer Alexander Cheparukhin.
Screening and Talk
Pussy Riot participated in a talk at the Casal de Barri Trinitat Nova, during which a 13-minute version of the documentary Act and Punishment, a summary of the group’s history, and a couple of videos of recent songs were shown. There was also a short performance by Alina Petrova playing the violin.
Alekhina, Pletner, and Petrova cannot return to Russia, where Vladimir Putin’s government would imprison them on various criminal charges. ‘Right now in Russia, raising an LGBTI+ flag is equivalent to five years in prison; raise one from Ukraine, 12 years, and call the Ukrainian conflict a war, eight years’, explains Maria Alekhina.
During the talk, Pussy Riot discussed the progressing totalitarian drift of the Russian regime and their struggle through performance art. In fact, the show they are preparing, which begins its European tour in Munich on February 2, has a lot of condemnation of the invasion of Ukraine and is very much based on the two books written by Maria Alekhina. ‘70% of Russians live on 100 euros a month. There is a lot of poverty. The regime needs the war to justify that it needs to tighten its belt and survive’, explains Alekhina.
