 Oh, nice and cool here. Keeps you awake, yeah. Hey, folks, how's everybody doing? Hello? Hello? Hey, interwebs. Good afternoon, everyone. OK, everyone. Get ready. For those of you watching online or listening on Intune, please get your questions in the queue. It's hashtag FMC12. Jean's last presentation certainly was very relevant in light of earlier discussions on collective licensing and collective bargaining. And this conversation, too, is very relevant on some of the free speech issues that's cropped up earlier with Senator Wyden. One of my absolute favorite things about the Future of Music Coalition is our ability to be nimble in our programming and to be able to present conversations with really intelligent people that address issues often before they really hit the general public and certainly the academic community in the broadest sense. Future Music Coalition is pleased to present this groundbreaking panel and the first of its kind. And it's only the beginning of many more and for many years to follow. So here's why Pussy Riot matters. Music is a vehicle for expression and oftentimes throughout history that expression has taken the form of protest. Take, for example, the case of Pussy Riot, the Russian punk band that grabbed headlines around the world following a 45-second performance in the Temple of Christ the Savior in Moscow. Whoops. Maybe Christ is saying something. When members of the Pussy Riot Collective were imprisoned in later sentience to two years in a labor colony, other artists, specifically and namely musicians, including Bjork, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Paul McCartney, Madonna, Yoko Ono, just to name a few, rallied to their defense. This case brings up a lot of issues, in particular free speech, human rights, feminism, and confrontational art in a networked world. So here to help us think through the implications is an amazing panel, including Molly Newman, Vice President of Label Relations for E-Music, who's joining us from New York, Dr. Mark Yafi, author of Rock and Roll in Nationalism, Curator of the International Counterculture Archive at George Washington University, musician Blue S. Moon, artist, writer, activist, Amy Klein, and our moderator, Lindsay Zolads, who's a freelance writer and pitchfork contributing editor. So ladies and gentlemen, here's why Pussy Riot matters. Thank you. And like Lyssa said, I'm so excited that this is the first panel of its kind on Pussy Riot, and I think we're all honored to be a part of it. You did a good job of sort of introducing why this issue matters to the future of music, so I don't wanna waste any more time with the context because I think we have some really fascinating perspectives to share. And I was thinking earlier, I was listening to Thomas Franks' remarks about he kept using this phrase adversarial art, which I think is something that's so rare in global culture these days, and I think something about the Pussy Riot protest that resonated so much in the West was it was this perfect example of adversarial art and what that looks like in 2012. So I'm excited to keep talking about that with this panel. So I wanna first field a question to you, Mark, because you've done a lot of really fascinating work on looking at Russian countercultures in the past couple decades, but particularly post-Soviet. So if you could maybe, first of all, put this into context a little bit and the charges against Pussy Riot were hooliganism based on religious hatred, and hooliganism in Russia carries a very historic context. So if you could maybe speak a little bit about that and put this into context a bit for us. Yes, well, it will take probably many years to sort out what really happened and what Pussy Riot really is. Is it punk band? Is it art collective or is it both or it's neither? But the resonance of their 45 second performance at the Temple of Christ the Saviour is tremendous inside of Russia and outside as far as United States. But Pussy Riot doesn't happen out of the blue but comes out of, well, actually historically, anthropologically speaking, from ancient Russian tradition of religious hooliganism that is known as Russian or Byzantine tradition of holy fools. That is someone who takes upon oneself the persona of full of Christ or village idiot and from that position speaks through to power. And one of the historical elements that Pussy Riot members were very much aware of was usage of absurdist, obscene hooligan and satirical, parodic, ironic idioms in their action. So Pussy Riot is, in Russian mind, Pussy Riot is inseparable from the satirical, humorous tradition of Russian counterculture from which they grew out from. What is new about them is not even their humor because this kind of humor is known in the history of Russian counterculture but what is new about them is the generational thing and the gender thing because until Pussy Riot, Russian counterculture, which is old and venerable and has done many heroic things, was entirely male-dominated and then something happened in this century with the people of Pussy Riot's generation that is the ones that grew informed after Soviet Union. Something happened, something that harkens back to 20 years, probably back to the traditions of American feminist Iraq, punk rock. And I think that's a good segue to, I wanna bring Molly Newman into the conversation too. Who was a sort of founding member of the Riot Girl movement with her band Bratmobile back in the early 90s and in addition to, I think it was sort of lost on Western audiences that Pussy Riot were riffing on this idea of the holy fool and a history of absurdism and humor in Russian satire, but the signifiers that really translated over here was that they were calling upon the imagery of the Riot Girl movement. So I wanna talk to Molly a little bit about that. And so Molly, I know you can, I can't see you, but I know you can hear us, are you alive up there? I wanna ask sort of a two-part question of you. What was it like when this case first came to your attention and these women in interviews were citing the Riot Girl movement as a source of inspiration in this work that you've done about 20 years ago now, what did it feel like to sort of see that enlivened in this new context? And also what are the differences, both cultural and in the way that media is used by each of these radical collectives? If you could just speak to that. So the first part, and you can hear me okay? Yeah, we can. Okay, the first part, I mean, it felt, certainly, I mean, I don't know, flattering is the right word necessarily, but certainly gratifying. But also, I mean, at the same time, what was happening to them was certainly shocking. And I think Mark hopefully will speak a little bit to, again, to the context of how this is happening within Russian and Russian culture and the Western view of how it was perceived. I think sometimes we had to keep ourselves and check a little bit because our values and assumptions about freedom and liberty and what's available to us as humans is perhaps there's a different construct. So I tried to look at what they were doing for what it was and how brave it was. And certainly felt, in thinking back in context in comparison to the work that we did and starting our bands and the messages that we were talking about, we never were necessarily concerned with going to jail for how we were, for the things that we were saying and the fact that they almost knew that they would be put in jail, that they were taking that risk was something that I think caused me to reflect quite a bit. Thanks, and yeah, I think that another aspect of this that is so interesting, Amy, maybe you can speak to this. Amy's done a lot of organizing as the founding member of the Permanent Weave Feminist Collective. So you're sort of bringing the current state of DIY and grassroots feminist organizing and the impact that this had on Pussy Riot or that Pussy Riot had in that context. So maybe if you could just speak a little bit about that. Yeah, so I wanna talk in a kind of personal way about my experiences, organizing and working with others to organize actions in support of Pussy Riot. I'm a member of Permanent Weave, which is a series of linked feminist collectives that focus on encouraging women to participate and collaborate in activism and the arts. So in the New York City group, we received a message from a member of Pussy Riot's International Legal Defense Team, which is a man who was in communication with Pussy Riot's lawyers. And he reached out to our group and was like you guys are a feminist collective focusing on women in the arts and punk rock. Can you do something in the United States to support Pussy Riot? So what we thought to do initially was to have benefit shows. We actually, the first benefit show featured ad rock from the Beastie Boys, which was a huge deal. It was the most high profile thing that I've ever done or that I've ever been involved in. It definitely was for the group. And so the benefit show for Pussy Riot, featuring ad rock, generated a lot of media attention. It was the first time that the case was mentioned in The Guardian and the benefit show led to the case of Pussy Riot being mentioned in Rolling Stone and Spin and magazines like this. So it really got a fair amount of media attention. There were other less high profile benefit shows that we did after and the Permanent Wape Boston did one. So yeah, it was really interesting that the effect that people, seemed to have, the effect that the case had on women my age where we heard as a group Pussy Riot needs help and immediately people mobilized to help them. That was really an interesting experience. People felt like this was something we could come together about. After the Pussy Riot case, actually the concepts that we've been thinking about led to a lot of discussion and introspection among members of the group. I think one of the things that came to our attention was like how, in what ways this case was similar and different to issues of feminism at home. People, I think, thought it was important and yeah, as a group we thought it was important to talk about people who are incarcerated in the United States wrongfully. And around the same time that the Pussy Riot case was happening, a transgender woman of color named Cece McDonald was also wrongfully incarcerated. This was a situation in which a transgender woman was defending herself against a hate crime and was imprisoned for murder for two years which is the same length of time that Pussy Riot got. So one of the things that we started thinking about as a group of feminists was what kinds of issues get major media attention when people are incarcerated. What stories of incarceration are played up in which ones are sometimes overlooked? I mean, overall, this was in a personal way I think an important moment where a lot of young feminists realized the importance of race within feminism, within feminism, the importance of respecting and paying attention to differences that exist in America and how things don't necessarily translate directly from Russia to America in the same context. So I mean, after having done something very public as kind of activism that was public with these benefits shows a lot of feminism that I'm doing now and I think other members of the group are doing now has to do with more introspective consciousness raising and discussion which I think is equally important that there are big moments where people put on public displays but then there's also a lot of thinking and work that needs to go on if we wanna move feminism forward. I think one of the things that you could see as a weakness of punk rock feminism as it's been viewed by our society or as people tend to think of it is that people see punk rock feminism as something that focuses on the experiences of white women and I think that needs to change if we are gonna continue to work with punk rock feminism and if it's gonna be a useful or valuable thing to work with here in America in the future. Yeah. And you brought up a ton of good points there but I wanna sort of zero in on one that you mentioned a while ago that I think something that we saw reported on in this case too is that there was such a disparity between the way that this case was perceived in the West and the way that a lot of like you mentioned ad rock for example coming out and vocalizing his support. There were so many celebrities in American culture and in Western culture who were Madonna wrote free pussy riot on her back at a concert and that was a very iconic image here but that was so different from the way that this case was perceived in Russia. So there becomes a question of how do we reconcile this? How do you consciously support this in a country where I can stand up here at this podium and say pussy to y'all like that's free speech and that is great but how I think it brought up a lot of questions like you were saying of how we can support this in a way that keeps our privilege in check. So open question to anybody but Mark this might be something that you can speak to of just the disparity between how this case was perceived in the West and what to your knowledge how what do people in Russia actually think about pussy riot? Well the whole notion of reception and perception of pussy riot both in Russia and in the West kind of bewilders me because of what happened in terms of reception and perception here didn't follow any expected patterns. For instance, speaking of Russian artistic community there was immediate schism between some avant-garde and performance art and rock musicians who supported pussy riot vehemently to a great extent in dangering themselves. The same goes to a number of prominent artists, writers, journalists and film directors in Russia. And then there was a huge number of intelligentsia that displayed nothing but misunderstanding and hatred of a pussy riot. For phrasing it not necessarily the way putinistas did that they have to be punished with jail term but at least they have to be taken outside and have their pants taken down and publicly whipped or there was a lot of talk of physical punishment even metaphorically which I and many of my colleagues find absolutely disgusting. And there was this almost sadistic voyeuristic element like this young women have to be physically, publicly punished. When you whip someone you undress them. So there was this voyeuristic desire. Then there was of course the simple folk in the street that were very divided babushkas. The ones whose religious perception could have been for real offended by pussy riot forgave them. But there was lots of nevertheless a public demagoguery about how offensive to religious spirit that performance was. To which, to my astonishment I just found out today American feminist establishment personified to some degree by Camille Parry signed up to entirely speaking absurdities about how she empathizes with Russian believers that were offended by pussy riot. Excuse me Camille. I mean, I don't know what planet you exist. Yeah. Then what happened in the West? It's also kind of flabbergasted because there's no rhyme or reason except for feminist punk community whom we expected to come to the pussy riot defense. I mean, there's Madonna, there's Sting. And then there are wild male philosophers like Bernard Lévy and Slavoj Žižek and then again Naomi Wolff and Camille Paglia are kind of absent. So I mean, it is very strange how pussy riot touch people and what levels and what... But very many, both in the West and in Russia very many complained about pussy riots lack of artistic value in their music. Well, if that was a good music, I would support them. But since this is this garbage homemade DIY punk I cannot support it. And I cannot lend my honorable name to the cause, insane. But luckily we Americans have a lot of experience with sloppy DIY punk and have a sort of grassroots infrastructure now of people who will kind of come around a cause like this in blue. I know you've done some activist work related to this as well. Cause, you know, Mark you were speaking about more of the mainstream feminist and mainstream intelligentsia. Even in America not really coalescing around this issue. But I think that there was, as Amy was speaking to a huge just a groundswell of feminist support for this issue and a lot from younger women too. So if you could maybe speak to that blue and like what, how you see this sort of impacting a future generation of activists and feminists. I think that this was quite interesting to find out about and learn more about especially. And I think for the younger generation or even, you know, my generation just noticing how this was like a moment of women showing that they can be brave and stand up for whatever they believe in no matter what the consequences are even if it's to go to prison or whatever they still, you know, got to have a voice and do something about it. And you know, I also volunteer for Girls Rock and I think that's one of the things that we also teach within Girls Rock and, you know, this is a camp for girls from the age of eight to 18. And, you know, they learn a ton of things but one of the main things that they learn is to be proud of who they are and that they have a voice and everyone deserves to hear it no matter what. So I think even seeing this it's also just another example is, you know, despite what may come from what you're doing if you believe in what you're doing and it means enough to you then you can make people listen to you by any means necessary, you know what I mean? And in this particular instance there was no violence that no one was hurt or anything it's just them saying, listen, we matter this is what we want heard and this is what we're gonna do and I think that within itself is, you know, beyond powerful, you know, it's like this is what I'm gonna do and if this is the consequences that's fine too I'm not gonna be hushed I'm not gonna be ignored and, you know, I matter so I think that's great, you know? So I'm gonna go on. And so much of, you know, a huge factor obviously in this story is the role that the internet played and, you know, we've been talking all day about these shifting ideas of music in the digital age and new emerging platforms and this is, you know, a central component to this story and I think it's really something that we can look to to see the ways that the internet really can be used for social change in a way that people had not really seen before. So, and I, we were discussing this earlier but I've been really fascinated to read things about the role that memes played in this current election and I read something that said this was the first meme election which I think is so true you saw the binder's full of women and the big bird out of Mitt Romney's mouth like all of that sort of again coalescing into this internet phenomenon but in a way I think Pussy Riot were a meme too and I mean that in a good and a bad way and that they were able to tap into this very visual visceral image and transmit that but, you know, I think we also see now that the benefits that you get of being a meme is that a lot of people will pay attention for a very short amount of time and then there is sort of a crest of that wave. So I wanna, and this is open to anybody who wants to jump on this but, you know, what can we learn about the good and the bad of using social media and digital platforms to kind of get this sort of a message across? I saw you like opening your mouth, Amy so I don't know if you, not to put you on the spot. Okay, I mean, one thing that is interesting about Pussy Riot is that visually, I mean, they had a complete package with the music, the message and the costumes that made them so shareable and like a musical level. Yeah, right, they were, for those who don't know, they wear a full balaclava so you can't tell who they are and they wear bright colored clothing but the point is like their identities are pretty obscure and it was a big deal when certain members were found and revealed. Anyway, I think like the mask element was very interesting because part of the point was that anyone could put on the mask and anyone could be Pussy Riot and they were talking about that a lot in their messaging, you are all Pussy Riot, we are all Pussy Riot, became something and there's a little bit like the social media aspect of it where anybody could share Pussy Riot and there were people putting on the mask and taking a photo and uploading it, the photo of themself and then all of a sudden there were pictures of Pussy Rioters all over the world and all over the internet so I mean, that's a real meme situation and it was interesting, I mean that's a very like occupy era kind of philosophy, like there's no leader, you can do this too, anybody's a part of the movement, that's a very social media kind of 21st century way of branding and messaging and it was very effective like in terms of the organizing work that I did, there was an older woman who was interested in organizing around women's right to contraception this summer when there was a lot of really damaging rhetoric about women in the presidential election and every other thing out of somebody's mouth was what's legitimate rape or something about women don't deserve birth control so I mean, people were really mad and so I met an older woman who was saying why don't younger women wear Pussy Riot masks and start having Pussy Riots about the issues that matter to us in America like birth control and our rights because I think this summer was a particular time when young women felt Planned Parenthood is being cut and the rights we took for granted are taken away, there was a lot of anger and Pussy Riot tapped into that sentiment and because it was something that anyone could do conceivably you know all you needed to cut some eye holes out of a hat and you got a balaclava, it was very interesting of course the downside of a meme is that I mean once you hit mainstream media and you're on the front page of a lot of publications then it becomes a trend and it's not really a social movement anymore it's the hot button issue and then after a while it's replaced by the next trend so I mean now most people are not talking about Pussy Riot even though Pussy Riot members are still in jail although we're talking about it now that's true because I if I could just interject I think it's the same media cycle that I don't think that the internet necessarily you know makes those conversations more superficial or shallow or anything like that I think it just speeds that cycle up you know I think that any interest or any case like this and story like this people the interest crest and it always has and that's always the way that the media has worked but you know it comes in these flashes now and I think that is the big difference and it makes me wonder and Molly might be able to speak to this particularly about anyone who wants to jump in you know is how do we kind of get beyond like how do we tap into that really visceral flash of you know energy that like you were saying Amy that I think a lot of young feminists felt over the summer but now that you know we're kind of in this post election I think like a lot of women are feeling pretty good about the way things went how do we kind of tap into that and not fall into complacency and what might this story tell us about how to do that? Oh Molly if you not to put you on the spot now I'm not sure I have a nice clean answer necessarily to the question I mean I think because I think it's a big expectation to you know have for any one you know situation to sort of invigorate or reinvigorate one thing to with you know I guess like I said a clear expectation of it but I think that it has generated enough conversation around the term feminism and the idea of young women in mass culture again having you know seeing calling themselves feminists and the energy that they've been able to generate I think is something that you know obviously there are many women in many parts of arts and creativity making music and you know Blue mentioned the girls rock camps I mean those are some things that are you know tremendously exciting to someone who you know 25 years ago could only have dreamed of having something along those lines I mean it was actually unfathomable so I think that this sort of energy and reintroduction into a wider conversation of you know feminist acceptance and energy associated with music is something that hopefully there's a way for that to resonate and continue on I just don't know necessarily about what you should what we should expect of it necessarily because I think I've always believed personally that any action and any creativity and any sort of momentum is something positive and you know 20 years after I started my band that I'm still for some reason you know my opinion now is still requested on topics like this is something that I wouldn't have imagined then either but that's been my personal philosophy is to keep making work keep doing what you can and still and remain connected and then hopefully that will transcend and continue to inspire and generate more energy and momentum is that sort of answer your question? Yeah it was a tall order it was a big sort of utopian but we're actually going to move to questions now because I want to make sure we have time for that any questions? Nobody wants to say the word pussy into the mic I thought that was going to be like the galvanizing force here A lot of people have liked saying that though that you can certainly tell Yeah I think we have a question up here I just wanted to know like what would the whole puppet behind Pussy Riot and their movement? Could you repeat the question? I just want to know the whole movement behind Pussy Riot here in the US and also in Russia So just a quick Let me just say a few words where they came from in Russia Back in 2008 there started Botan Moscow and in St. Petersburg an art collective of guerrilla artists engaged in extreme public art called Vaina, that means the war The name itself speaks for itself and they started with the bank literally with an orgy that occurred at the Museum of the Zalzological Museum of Moscow State University celebrating President Medvedev's coming to power in 2008 Well after that and the two of the Pussy Riot members were the founding members of that art collective but these two founding members were the most radical ones that agreed to go to jail and therefore they splintered from their mother group That's the history I can make a really quick comment too that something you had mentioned because I think looking at this in terms of the internet cycle doesn't tell the whole story here because as we said this is the first panel where this is happening and Mark, something you had mentioned earlier in the green room that I thought was interesting is that it's sort of moving through this phase if once the mainstream media gets tired of the story or doesn't see a new angle to report on anymore this is moving sort of to the academic realm now and I think you mentioned that there you're going to I think a Slavic Studies conference where there's also going to be a whole panel on Pussy Riot and you said this will spawn many, many a dissertation for many years to come so again I think that this conversation still has a lot of life in it even if it's not a trending topic on Twitter anymore I don't think the conversation is over here so any more questions out there? I'm curious about the more general sort of counter-culture and unrest happening in Russia which started with the idea that the election was thrown and went through sort of public outcry and that sort of stuff and then at one point took the form of little dolls as protests and then to Pussy Riot and I'm wondering if there's a fatigue maybe they just have gotten tired of getting arrested maybe? Well in regards to Russian protest movement in general outside of guerrilla artists such as Vaina and Pussy Riot the movement as such is pathetic it's laughable it consists mostly of overeducated overpaid urbanites and they can't gather a crowd larger than 30,000 Yappies in downtown Moscow and it usually looks like a fashion show so we can't seriously speak yet about social movement per se. There is no reputable sizable parties that can't test and there is no organizations of any sort that represent dissent it is left to Russia's youth that 22 year old wants to decide this problem because they are the ones who grew up without Soviet indictrination. They are absolutely free people like Pussy Riot have proved it. They are not brainwashed they are fresh they are smart, they are extremely well educated and they are extremely knowledgeable people about media and social media in particular Pussy Riot would not exist if they did not have in mind social media. They created themselves for social media so it is all in the future it's a hopeful note to end on I think yeah well thank you so much. This is a really exciting discussion to have been yeah thanks thank you