On Monday May the 12th Professor Rosi Braidotti, together with American scholar Judith Butler, met the members of the punk protest band Pussy Riot in Oslo during the First Supper Symposium. The symposium, which gathered enormous attention from the press, addressed questions such as feminist performance art, the politics of protests and prisoner’s rights. Other speakers were curators Viktor Misiano and Ekaterina Sharova . Pussy Riot was represented by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina who reflected on the context of their Punk Prayer performance (2012) and subsequent imprisonment.
Watch the video of Prof. Braidotti’s talk “Punk Women and Riot Grrls” here.
Links to the music videos used in the talk:
- Janis Joplin – Mercedes Benz
- Nina Hagen Band- Unbeschreiblich weiblich (pop-meeting 1979. Section 1:35-2:23)
- Kathleen Hanna Bikini Kill – Suck My Left One & Rebel Girl (live 1992)
A number of serious issues were raised when members of Pussy Riot were arrested and imprisoned after their Punk Prayer performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (2012). When does public protest transgress the limited range of permissible behaviours in a society? What is the future of feminist performance art under times of censorship?
The First Supper Symposium aimed to address these questions and provide different perspectives on Pussy Riot’s punk protest performances: Viktor Misiano and Ekaterina Sharova situated their work in the context of recent Russian art history and discussed the issue of art – including feminist art – as a medium for political resistance.
Rosi Braidotti presented a genealogy of feminist art practices and talked about how performances have been used as feminist means of protest, including the politics of women’s rock and punk bands. Bradotti’s line was: “Feminism rocks!”
Judith Butler focussed on the human rights of political and other prisoners in the context of contemporary security concerns and examined the gender and LGBT issues Pussy Riot invoke in a wider context of political resistance and public demonstrations.
The First Supper Symposium also featuread a programme of art exhibitions, discussions, screenings and a panel discussion with the Pussy Riot moderated by Natalie Hope O’Donnell.
The First Supper Symposium is a collaborative feminist art project, founded by artists Gidsken Braadlie and Lisa Pacini in Oslo in 2012.
Read a message about it in Dutch at the Filosofie.nl magazine here.
Read Italian translation of the lecture text here.
Watch a video of the conversation between Judith Butler, Rosi Braidotti and Pussy Riot.