Pussy Riot, the provocative, political Russian punk band, got here to Washington Sq. Park Wednesday to ship a stern warning: “Wake up, America!”
Their faces hidden behind purple ski masks, six members of the feminist artwork collective marched down Fifth Ave. and into the Greenwich Village park round 1 p.m. Standing in entrance of the Washington Sq. Arch, they unfurled two giant banners bearing messages: “Don’t Give Up” and “Freedom of Speech?”
Two different members of the group held up a rotating assortment of placards with phrases like “Fever Dream,” “1984” and “Great Again: The Greatest Greatness But Mine Is Greater (Again).”
“We’ve been imprisoned in Russia,” mentioned band member Masha Alyokhina. “We’ve been persecuted. We are in federal wanted lists in our country. So if we appear on the border, we’ll be immediately arrested for our anti-Putin and anti-war — [a war] which he started — activities.
“We are here now because we see the [rise] of authoritarian[ism] here. We want to call people to not be silent and we want people to remember to not to give up, even in the difficult conditions — to have hope inside, to have belief.”
Alyokhina served 21 months in jail in Russia after the band was accused of “hooliganism” for performing in a Moscow cathedral in 2012. Two years later, they had been attacked by Cossacks with whips and pepper spray on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
In October 2016, with Donald Trump on the verge of successful his first time period as U.S. president, the anti-authoritarian band launched a music and video, “Make America Great Again,” that includes the chorus, “Let other people in/ Listen to your women/ Stop killing Black children/ Make America great again.”
Claudia Emilyn Schwalb, 72, a visible artist and longtime Village resident who was having fun with her ordinary “park time,” mentioned she was honored to have seen Pussy Riot, albeit briefly.
“I had no idea they were going to be here,” she mentioned. “I’m thrilled. I like everything in art that’s liberal. … They’re stubborn exhibitionists.”
Pussy Riot’s park motion coincides with the beginning of their North American tour, which kicks off Thursday in Montreal. On Might 2, they’ll play at The Corridor at Elsewhere, in Brooklyn.
