Pussy Riot’s Man in Portland
Rob Lieber leaps from art to activism
by Carl Davulis
One crosses paths with Rob Lieber often in Portland — he is a prolific flâneur — and he is inevitably in some frazzled state of excitement. Both the frazzle and the excitement have increased over the past two years, as Lieber has become engrossed in his work on behalf of Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist art collective.
Pussy Riot first made headlines two years ago, when three of its members (Katya Samutsevich, Masha Alyokhina and Nadya Tolokonnikova) were arrested and imprisoned following a guerilla punk-rock protest inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Over the course of a few months, Lieber, an artist and art-history lecturer, went from dabbling in digital activism to real-time engagement on the ground, accompanying Pussy Riot members as they met with U.S. Representatives, State Department officials, and the White House’s “Russia people.” Last summer, Lieber guided two members of the group as they traveled incognito across Western Europe, speaking at festivals and meeting with politicians and fellow activists, including Julian Assange of WikiLeaks. No one in the group is proficient in English, so Lieber, who does not speak Russian, often acts as their English-language liaison, helping them assess and respond to e-mails and other communications from the Western world.
When I met with Lieber last month at Speckled Ax, a coffee shop on Congress Street, he had just returned from a long weekend in New York, where he and another member of the group’s support team had been drumming up interest in a new Pussy Riot project: a documentary, tentatively titled “The Pussy Riot Guide to Feminism,” being developed in collaboration with Belgian director Saddie Choua. Lieber apologized for being under the weather, and while some road wear was evident, his enthusiasm was as infectious as ever as he produced a tarnished aluminum spoon from his knapsack…
Lieber: This right here is Katya Samutsevich’s prison spoon. Isn’t it interesting? Look at the design here — your thumb’s not gonna slip when you hold it. She sent it to me along with a bag of buckwheat, kasha, because that’s what she learned to love, being in the Moscow city jail for seven months. I promised her I would only eat coffee ice cream with it. One of the only things she’ll get when she goes out is café glacé, which is essentially ice cream in coffee. They all went to a coffee shop before the performance at the Christ the Savior Cathedral. It’s kind of a good image for a movie, the group eating ice cream out of coffee cups.
The Bollard: Are you in touch with Katya regularly?
Yeah. We e-mailed quite a bit yesterday. It’s really fascinating what’s going on with the group now. It’s a tragedy in many ways. The two members who were freed in December, Masha and Nadya, have yet to have a conversation with any other member of the group. Prudential, the financial corporation, just sponsored the Eye Awards, in Singapore, and Pussy Riot was nominated for a digital-media award. Masha and Nadya went there to potentially receive a huge cash prize, and they didn’t even tell anybody else in the group. [Pussy Riot did not win the award.] Katya’s great. We argue a little bit, but I look forward to meeting her in person. I want to try to bring her to New York. They’ve got a lot of fascinating offers that I can’t be specific about right now.
How did you get started doing this?
A couple days after they were arrested, the story showed up on the three o’clock news, NPR’s The World. I was intrigued, so I looked it up and watched the video. The performance they did, I thought, Gosh, who would stand up for these women? The video seemed so absurd; at the time it felt almost Dadaist. Because of my own background in art, you know, I felt it. I did a little more research, saw some Facebook and LiveJournal sites that were in Cyrillic, and just tried to piece together who they really were. I went onto a website called freepussyriot.org. I wrote a little note of solidarity and ended up being asked if I could help. Almost immediately I was given the log-in and password, and it became my job to upload content for the English section. Within a week I had found somebody to help with the French section. It’s now in five languages.
That was March of 2012. In May, we did a benefit here, at SPACE Gallery. My grasp of what was happening in Russia had increased quite a bit. It went from just sort of looking for content to understanding things through the protest movement. Putin’s inauguration on May 6 had started off a wave of “occupying,” and I followed it on Twitter, through a lot of people from my new network. I connected with a feminist group in New York and we hosted a benefit in Brooklyn, to generate headlines. It was primarily a bunch of girl punk bands, but we ended up getting Ad-Rock from the Beastie Boys to DJ a set. And, my gosh, the next day it was all over the Russian newspapers. I think it really blew a lot of people’s minds: How could somebody who sold 20 million records care about these women? There’s still a certain absurdity in Russia when people think about Pussy Riot — like, why would anybody even care?
So they’re not viewed as heroes at home, the way they are in the United States and Western Europe?
People view them through the lens of what they’ve been told, because the Kremlin has such a grip on mass media. The women are basically projected like spoiled, bitchy, evil brats. The group is labeled extremist in Russia, so they’re banned. There could not be an exhibit of Pussy Riot’s work even at a contemporary art center right now — without potential trouble. For instance, the Gogol Theater, in Moscow, was going to show this documentary, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. It was scheduled and it was canceled. Essentially, censors cut it off.
In late December, several Russian political prisoners, including Masha and Nadya, were granted amnesty and released from prison. What exactly does their amnesty consist in?
There’s no strings attached. They’re free.
Do they feel free?
Well, what they say is that they’ve always felt free. They’re firm about that. I’ve also heard it said that all of Russia feels like a prison. So I think there’s layers to freedom. I think inside they feel free. And they’ve already started a new organization, a prisoners’ rights advocacy group. I think they’ve entered into this sphere of politics, which is different than being political artists. But Nadya and Masha have distanced themselves from their past, and are speaking as individuals, not for Pussy Riot.
The members of the group who were not arrested remain anonymous. Do they continue to be politically engaged?
Absolutely, they’ve maintained political activity. On top of advocating for their sisters’ releases, they’re active in everything from the LGBT solidarity movement to countering the anti-immigration trend. They are very focused, still very much on the ground in Moscow, kicking against the bricks, whether it’s as a visual artist, a musician, or a street protester/activist. It’s a real supergroup in some ways. They have a studio space they put together about two months ago. Katya, who’s not anonymous, has been spending quite a bit of her time in the courts, trying to sue her former lawyers. And she’s been focusing on overturning the extremist label. A number of them — I feel like they’ve practically gotten law degrees on their own, so to speak.
In their performances and videos, the members of Pussy Riot wear balaclavas. Can you talk about this image?
For them, I think the balaclava represents being able to maintain a sense of anonymity — not only of one’s name, but also of one’s appearance. After the arrests, the members who were not arrested went pretty tight into hiding. A lot of their close friends didn’t even know they were members of the group. [They remained anonymous] for their safety, but also as an experiment in being part of a feminist collective that speaks with one voice, not as individuals. During the summer of 2012, when three of the group members were on trial, one of the strategies of developing support and energy and movement was this notion that anybody could put on a balaclava and be a member of Pussy Riot. It is absolutely a gift to the world, this specific strategy for feminists to speak out.
In terms of the cultural history of the image, I thought right away it was a feminist answer to the Zapatistas, where Commander Marcos wore the balaclava. But also the police there, in Moscow, and also in the Ukraine — security people wear the balaclava because they want their identity to not be known.
Like the executioner’s hood.
The executioner’s hood, absolutely …. Pussy Riot is very much a non-violent way of projecting, I don’t want to say violence — I mean, their violence is of sound. They do everything but be violent. They’re very physical, this flash-punk scene, they’re yar-yar-yar! and then they disappear.
In the documentary you mentioned, there’s this group of bearded Russian Orthodox men, the Carriers of the Cross, driving to a prayer rally — sort of a Pussy Riot counter-protest — and this one guy says, and you could write a doctoral dissertation on this quotation: “The main one, she is a demon with a brain. She’s a strong demon. She is stubborn. You can tell by her expression. You can tell by her lips, her mouth. There have always been witches who wouldn’t repent.”
It’s so funny you say that. One of the first interviews they did when they were released, a few days afterwards, was with this well-known socialite sort of interviewer who leans closer to the opposition figures. She said something about Nadya’s beauty and “is your beauty because of your lips?” or something like that, but there’s a lot of emphasis on Nadya’s beauty. That’s one of the things that came out of the trial. Everybody thought that Nadya was the philosophical brain of Pussy Riot, and I think quite a lot of that had to do with the way she looks. But it’s completely untrue. Pussy Riot’s a one-hundred percent — or was, or is — a very horizontal structure.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
I knew you would ask this question! And it does come up once in a while, in an interesting way, in my discussions with those guys. For the members themselves, the concept of a man being a feminist … there’s something in translation — you just can’t put those concepts together. But I do consider myself a feminist. Like all things, I think there’s plenty of contradictions.
I don’t know if you saw the video, kind of a pre-Pussy Riot video of the group they were a part of beforehand, Voina — which translates to “war” — kissing the female police officers. When I saw that video, about a month into everything, I just thought, Wow, that is absolutely the way it needs to happen.
What do you think was the significance of that performance?
It’s just a great way of having action without violence, and for it to be based on a symbol of love and affection. Certainly the police in Moscow are demonized as the enemy, and so it’s a great way to speak about loving one’s enemy. And embracing. I think we’re seeing a bit of that in the Ukraine right now, where people are going up to police officers and kissing them.
I feel like that raises a question about the limits of digital activism and advocacy, because it seems to me that radical politics ultimately requires some commitment you make with your body — “occupying” a public place, standing in front of a tank…
I think there’s many different components to an organism. I feel really good about doing what I could, because those women were brave enough to take risks with their bodies. But I absolutely do agree, there has to be that component of the body. And that’s what’s so fascinating about what’s going on in Kiev right now, with all the protesters in Independence Square. People are there around the clock, and it is freezing right now! Or a couple years ago, people just stood in the city of Minsk, in Belarus, right by the train station, and just started clapping, but it was enough of a threat that they all got hauled off into a truck and beaten, put in jail.
You traveled with two anonymous members of Pussy Riot last summer.
In the winter the group was starting to get invitations to rock festivals, meetings with activists, and so on. A trip started to develop, a loose schedule. For the months leading up to it, we were obsessed with getting them visas, how to get them expedited. That was kind of the obsession. We went to D.C., then on to Europe. We met with people in the U.K. government, the French government, a lot of people in the Bundestag in Berlin, Sweden’s EU representative.
To maintain the members’ anonymity, we used lots of different security measures. None of us had really, you know, read a book on how to deal with this stuff, but our security measures were pretty tight. There were lots of situations where we felt like someone might have been monitoring us. So if we happened to stay at a hotel, we’d keep their names out of the registry. They’d disguise their physical appearance — wigs, big glasses. We had to alter their voices whenever they spoke in public. However we came in, we’d leave a different way. It was all fascinating, for a guy from Portland.
How did you come to find yourself sitting on a couch across from Julian Assange?
So the invite to London came from the Meltdown Festival, which was curated by Yoko Ono. She had invited Pussy Riot, and had also given Julian Assange the Courage Award. The director of the festival asked if we’d want to meet with him. We spent a couple days thinking about it. Because of the women’s identity, we were nervous about even entering the [Ecuadorian] embassy. It’s surrounded by police officers 24/7, and there are cameras everywhere. So what do we do? Is there a side entrance? Can we take a car? We ended up just walking there.
The embassy itself is essentially a small apartment in a building. They took our passports, gave us passes, and brought us into the front room with the balcony, where we’ve seen Assange address the media. The shades are drawn, and there’s Assange behind six or seven of these mini-laptops staggered in front of him. He’s operating all of them at the same time, completely locked into a zone where he didn’t even acknowledge us. All of a sudden he pops up, takes a seat on the couch, and the dialogue began.
He wanted right away to try to utilize any experience he had for them, provide advice about lawyers. One of the reasons we were wondering if we should even meet Assange is that feminists have a hard time with him, because of the rape allegations. The women weren’t sure if they should ask him about that. I thought it would be silly not to. So they did, and he gave a really great, long, geopolitical answer, which I can’t get into, since it’s ongoing, legally.
There was something else going on internally at the embassy. He’s got handlers coming in and out, and we could sense some stress. We found out what it was afterwards. Assange, when we arrived, had been messaging with Edward Snowden — this was at the peak of the Snowden crisis — and the drama was whether Ecuador would be able to provide him with asylum. So we were really just a blip.
Last fall you hosted a delegation of LGBT activists from Arkhangelsk [also called Archangel], Portland’s sister city in Russia. How did this come about?
I saw on Facebook that one of my colleagues on the Pussy Riot support team, Anno, had gone up to Arkhangelsk to protest and was holding a sign in front of the police station: “Trans-men can be gay — sexual education into school education.” He was ushered away and took the train back to Moscow. And I was thinking, Wait, that’s our sister city! I did a little research, found that our sister city is the pioneer of these anti-gay laws that have been passed in Russia. I approached our city councilors on this. I talked with Ed Suslovic and the chairman of the Sister City Committee about the pros and cons of boycotting the sister-city relationship. What we did do was invite members of Rakurs, which is the only civil-rights organization in the whole region. It translates as “Perspective.” Their main focus is to just be able to work within civil society as an organization, like the ACLU; to have a regular relationship with City Hall — communicate, sue each other, not sue each other.
Can you explain these anti-gay laws?
It’s primarily based on, quote-unquote, protecting the youth. It’s called an anti-propaganda law, officially, and providing information or counseling about LGBT issues has been labeled as propaganda. Say somebody holds a sign outside of a library, or is out in public holding hands, where a kid could see them — that could be considered propaganda. It’s a very ambiguous law, with the purpose of intimidation. What it did do was really encourage vigilantism, so a lot of young gays are being targeted on a version of Craigslist. A kid’s trying to meet another kid, and we have vigilante groups trying to “convert” them through forms of humiliation.
Why would passing this law matter to the Kremlin or Putin? Is it a way of appealing to religious voters? Is it a form of, not xenophobia exactly, but, I mean, fascism and nationalism and authoritarianism do this in all kinds of different forms, where there’s a scapegoated community…
Exactly. It’s very much seen as that. In Arkhangelsk, it’s tough up there. They’ve lost a hundred thousand people from their population since the fall of communism. Who wants to be up there? It’s geographically remote, hundreds of miles north of Moscow, the end of the line. It has a really rough water system, sanitation system. And the Soviets tore down all the cool buildings and built all these shitty buildings. It’s really in tough shape. “Don’t look at those potholes over there, look at those guys over there that look gay.”
But Rakurs does not support a boycott of the Olympic Games in Sochi.
What they would prefer is for the Olympics to happen, but they’d also prefer for there to be a Pride House in the Olympic Village, sort of a safe zone for gay athletes and spectators. And that application has been denied. They’d prefer to be able to represent themselves as who they are. And I think they would be super happy if someone like Seth Wescott, if he wins a third gold medal, if he spoke out on the stand.
Whereas Pussy Riot…
The group members are pretty much uniformly for a boycott. They just feel like it’s rotten to the core. This is a very political, propagandist event. They do not think that this regime should be fêted in this way. The Olympics has always been a very propagandist event — think of Hitler in 1936 — and I don’t think this is any different. At all.
Do you see yourself going to Russia at some point? Would you have trouble getting a visa?
I would love to go, yeah. I don’t have any direct plans, primarily because of money.
In terms of a visa, I think that’s one reason why I’ve always kept a little quiet in the media. I mean, Russia’s not Belarus. There’s plenty of people who are out in the open, actively pursuing a change. They’d be wasting their time with me. But you’re right, they do have an issue with foreigners coming in and writing about Russia. A Swiss director came to Moscow to do a play based on the Pussy Riot trials, and was not allowed to come back after that, when he wanted to then film it. If I did get turned down, I’d know they’ve been reading my e-mails.
