Artist for a New Age: Dissident Russian Performance Art and the Work of Petr Pavlenskii

Abstract

After Petr Pavlenskii performed the action Otdelenie in 2014, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova compared Pavlenskii’s work to that of Pussy Riot, and argued that the carefree, carnivalesque spirit that had characterized their punk rock performances was no longer suitable for the political reality of Putin’s Russia. This article takes Tolokonnikova’s statement as a starting point and explores the ways in which Pavlenskii’s artistic practice both conforms with, and deviates from the model for art activism employed by Voina, Pussy Riot, and other political art collectives in contemporary Russia, including Kollektivnye deistviia, Ekspropriatsiia territorii iskusstva, Oleg Kulik, and Chto delat’, among others. The author finds that Pavlenskii’s work largely conforms to the style of his predecessors in terms of locale, political sentiment and reasoning, but diverges from these models in its tone, brutality, and premeditated use of state power as an artistic medium.