Pussy Riot’s Moscow Trials: Restaging Political Protest and Juridical Metaperformance

Abstract

When punk activists ‘Pussy Riot’ were sentenced to two years in a penal camp in the summer of 2012 for their unannounced appearance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, it sparked protest rallies across the globe. But this was just one event of what has been ten years of show trials against artists and dissidents. The project ‘The Moscow Trials’ attempted to inject impetus into rigid Russian circumstances through the form of political theatre. In Moscow’s Sakharov Centre a court was set up in which a three-day trial show provided the stage for the exponents of Russia’s cultural war. In a re-enacted show trial with the most important exponents of the Russian cultural war, ‘art’ faced up against ‘religion’; ‘dissident’ Russia against ‘true’ Russia. There were no actors on stage; instead there were real-life protagonists: artists, politicians, church leaders, lawyers, and a judge. A lay court made up of six Moscow residents was intended to reach a verdict: for or against democracy, for or against artistic freedom.