page_title: Performance art
section_title: Radical performance
hierarchical_section_title: Performance art / Since the 2000s / Radical performance
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Петр Павленский. Отделение
context_page_description: Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be live, through documentation, spontaneously or written, presented to a public in a Fine Arts context, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance art, also known as artistic action, has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant garde art.
  It involves four basic elements: time, space, body, and presence of the artist, and the relation between the creator and the public. The actions, generally developed in art galleries and museums, can take place in the street, any kind of setting or space and during any time period. Its goal is to generate a reaction, sometimes with the support of improvisation and a sense of aesthetics. The themes are commonly linked to life experiences of the artist themselves, or the need of denunciation or social criticism and with a spirit of transformation.
context_section_description: During the first and second decade of the 2000s, various artists are prosecuted, judicialized, detained or imprisoned for their works of political content. Artists such as Pussy riot, Tania Bruguera, and Petr Pavlensky have been judged for diverse artistic actions created with the intention of denouncing and visibilizing.
  On February 21, 2012, as a part of their protest against the re-election of Vladímir Putin, various women of the artistic collective Pussy riot entered the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour of Moscow of the Russian Orthodox Church. They made the Sign of the Cross, bowed before the shrine, and started to interpret a "performance" compound by a song and a dance under the motto "Virgin Mary, put Putin Away". On March 3, they were detained. On March 3, 2012, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, two members of the Pussy Riot, were arrested by the Russian authorities and accused of vandalism. At first, they both denied being members of the group and started a hunger strike for being incarcerated and taken apart from their children until the trials began in April. On March 16 another woman, Yekaterina Samutsévitch, who had been previously interrogated as a witness, was arrested and accused as well. On July 5, formal charges against the group and a 2800-page accusation were filed. That same day they were notified that they had until July 9 to prepare their defense. In reply, they announced a hunger strike pleading that two labour days was an inappropriate time frame to prepare their defense. On July 21, the court extended their preventive prison to last six more months. The three detained members of the Pussy Riot are son recognized as political prisoners by the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners. Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience for "the severity of the response of the Russian authorities".
  In December 2014 Tania Bruguera was detained in La Habana to prevent her from carrying out new reivindicative works. Her performance art pieces have earned her harsh critiques, she has even been accused of promoting resistance and public disturbances. In December 2015 and January 2016, Bruguera was detained for organizing a public performance in the plaza de la Revolución of La Habana. She was detained along with other Cuban artists, activists and reporters that took part in the campaign Yo También Exijo, which was created after the declarations of Raúl Castro and Barack Obama in favor of restoring their diplomatic relationship. During the performance El Susurro de Tatlin #6 she set microphones and talkers in the Plaza de la Revolución so the Cubans could express their feelings regarding the new political climate. The event had great repercussion in international media, including a presentation of El Susurro de Tatlin #6 in Times Square, and an action in which various artists and intellectuals expressed themselves in favour of the liberation of Bruguera by sending an open letter to Raúl Castro signed by thousands of people around the world asking for the return of her passport and claiming criminal injustice, as she only gave a microphone to the people so they could give their opinion.
  In November 2015 and October 2017 Petr Pavlensky was arrested for carrying out a radical performance art piece in which he set on fire the entry of the Lubyanka Building, headquarters of the Federal Security Service of Russia, and a branch office of the Bank of France. On both occasions he sprayed the main entrance with gasoline, in the second performance he sprayed the inside too, and lit it up with a lighter. The doors of the building were partially burnt. Both times Pavlenski was arrested without resistance and accused of debauchery. A few hours after the actions, several political and artistical reivindicative videos appeared on the internet.
caption: Petr Pavlensky cutting his own ear in a political action in the Red Square of Moscow
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