Activist-singer Nadya Tolokonnikova of the group Pussy Riot backstage at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles with two dancers in Balaclava masks. The band performed songs from a new"mix tape" album called"Matriarchy Now." has come with a full agenda to Los Angeles’ El Rey Theater, ready to bounce and rage to a soundtrack of sultry pop hooks and noisy, glitchy electronics.
The message is the point, a lesson learned from the example of conceptual artists like Marina Abramović. But so is the gathering of the community at these live performances, which, this year, have included stops at South by Southwest and Outside Lands, as well as another set planned for New York City in September.
The legal drama arguably gave the young women more power in Russia and abroad than they ever could have imagined. At the trial, Tolokonnikova and close friend Masha Alyokhina were sentenced to two years in a Russian penal colony, where they continued to protest poor living conditions and slave labor.
The case has Tolokonnikova “enraged” and is part of a larger cause for legalizing marijuana in the country. “Weed has to be legal. I’ve been fighting against the Russian war on drugs for years. I’ve seen so many people being locked up.” It’s the reason her Pussy Riot performances are few, rather than embark on a full tour traveling from city to city.
As the song that introduced Pussy Riot to the larger world, “Punk Prayer” was the most intense, unpolished form of agit-punk, with gut-punch lyrics and a shrieking melody. They performed a similarly raw follow-up, “Putin Will Teach Us to Love the Motherland,” in protest outside of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where Alyokhina, Tolokonnikova and others were beaten by Cossacks.
Onstage and off, in music or visual art, Tolokonnikova’s work has challenged gender roles and stereotypes, and pushed boundaries without apology. In 2008, a very pregnant Tolokonnikova and her then-husband were among five couples having public sex as a performance art protest against the government at Moscow’s State Biological Museum.
Two dancers with the group Pussy Riot perform at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles. The band led by activist-singer Nadya Tolokonnikova performed songs from a new “mix tape” album called “Matriarchy Now.”
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