this balaclava is too hot.pdf

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Figure 1. Author shows half finished knitting of a baiaclava. Courtesy the a uthor

6



This aiaciava Is Too Hot

arbara rowning

Violetta Volkova, a member of the legal defense team of Pussy Riot,

reached out and felt the balaclava I was knitting. I was using some bulky,

organic, forest-green wool, and if I do say so myself it was shaping

up pretty nicely. Volkova thought so, too: she nodded and gave me an

approving thrust of her chin. But then she added, through a translator:

It looks good, but it's going to be too hot. Well, maybe it's good for

Siberia in the winter. Also, they don't make theirs like that, you know.

They just get a shirt or a stocking and rip out the eyeholes and the

mouthholes.

We were in a small meeting room at New York University School of

Law, preparing for a forum on the Pussy Riot case. It was 21 September

2012, after the 7 August sentencing and shortly before the group's sched-

uled appeal, which would resu lt in the suspension of the sentence of Yekat-

erina Samutsevich bu t the upho lding of those of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

and Maria Alyokhina. The legal defense team had come to the United

States to draw a ttention to the case, and I had been invited to pose a ques-

tion relating to the performance aspects of their action in the Cathedral

of Christ the Savior. During the forum, the lawyers seemed particularly

intent on countering the legal claims against the women, citing a statute

that specifically laid out the appropriate punishment for the disruption of

a religious service: a nominal administrative fine—nothing approaching

the severe prison terms the women had been handed. The lawyers' main

preoccupation was in demonstrating that the judicial response was clearly

politically motivated.

Mark Feygin, another member of the defense team, enumerated

counterarguments to the charges of blasphemy and hooliganism (some

of the women considered themselves to be active members of the Russian

Orthodox Church; they weren't actually standing on the altar but rather

Social Text 6

Vol. 31 , No. 3 • Fall 2013

DO I 10.1215/01642472-2152882 © 2013 Duk e University Press 3 7


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Figure 2. Screen shot of YouTube video of New York University School of Law forum,

Pussy Riot and Protest: The Future of Dissent in Putin's Russia and Beyond, 21 Septem ber 201 2,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZSCvAHL_ZU

in front of it there's no actual prohibition for women to be there, it's just

not part of Orthodox tradition; they were only there for forty seconds;

it wasn't blasphemous; it wasn't violent; they didn't resist or violate the

ritu al; this was a short and inoffensive political statement . . . ). I'd asked

whether their action might actually be better understood as, in fact, not

antireligious, but indeed as an act of faith, if

one

were to take seriously the

notion of

feminist prayer. This suggestion seemed to go over like a lead

balloon. Somehow, both faith and feminism got lost in the shuffle of legal-

isms and a more generalized despair over Putin's strategies for clamping

down on the opposition.

Th e other thing tha t got pretty rapidly dismissed was the notion that

what Pussy Riot did in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior had any kind

of aesthetic value.' One audience member asked about the nature ofthe

performance— was it lip-synching? Did that m atter? Feygin responded that

the women had intended to perform, but he pretty categorically dismissed

what they did s an act of art, shrugg ing off w hat he considered the idiotic

choreography, in my opinion (this got a good laugh ). He allowed as how

there's no accounting for taste, but it seemed clear that any question of

artistic potency, along with specifically feminist political content, was of

minimal interest alongside the primary concern regarding the silencing

of Putin's opposition.

Browning •

This alaclava Is Too Hot



Th is response echoed many of the com ments I had heard at another

Pussy Riot panel that had been convened at N Y U one week earlier, at the

Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia. I spoke briefiy at that

event about the relationship between Pussy Riot and prior radical musical

and performance art actions, such as AC T U P's Stop the C hurch action

at St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989. While the audience appeared largely

sympathetic to Pussy Riot's political message, as they understood it, a

num ber of people expressed concern about the choice to relay it in a house

of worship. But more than this, they seemed highly skeptical about the

performance's artistic merits.

I must

say,

each time aesthetic objections w ere raised, it really threw

me for a loop. If Pussy Riot's choreography didn't count as dance, what

would these people make of so much of the downtown choreography I

go to see as a dance scholar on a regular basis? Pussy Riot's ecstatic fist-

pum ping, culm inating in the stunningly heartfelt prostration of one dancer

before the altar, was reminiscent of the m ost gripping m oments of a perfor-

mance by Miguel Gutierrez that I had seen recently at St. M ark's Ch urch.

But even if one had

a

certain resistance to (apparently) nonvirtuosic cho re-

ography, how could anybody deny the interest of the song Pu nk Prayer ?

I'd had to pay pretty close attention to the song's musical structure and

arrang em ent, as well as to its lyrics, because I had made a ukulele cover of

it. Tha t's kind of

a

long story— it is pa rt of

a

sort of conceptual art project

I had launched that year, making an inordinate number of sentimental,

warbling covers of both likely and unlikely ditties as gifts for people. They

ranged from jazz standards and French chansons to Nicki Minaj, Insane

Clown Posse, and , well. Pussy R iot. I can 't lay claim to expertise on any of

these musical idioms or artists. Th at was kind of the point. I had a couple

of other tun es in my catalog that m ight be broadly con strued as pro to- or

post-punk (some early Iggy Pop I had made for an old friend named

Lenny, and a Hole cover I had done for Karen Finley), but I'm really not

an aficionado. Still, I loved doing Pun k Prayer.

A lot of people here seem to have read the lyrics in translation, but

perhaps didn't pay particularly close attention to the song's musical struc -

ture.

It opens with a liturgical melody, replete with hymnal harmonies.

Th is refrain is repeated in the middle and at the end of the song, while the

verses are comprised of antifascist, explicitly feminist prayer—extremely

clever wordplay delivered in two alternating Sprechstimme voices: a

growling alto, and a piercing, girlish shriek.̂ Of cou rse, popular concep-

tions of punk vocal performance are often confirmed by musicians'

self

depiction, and the case of Pussy Riot is no exception. Pussy R iot member,

G arad zha , not among those arrested, was quoted in the

oscow

News

(a quote that was subsequently picked up by the Western press) saying:

ocial Text 6 •

Fall

2013 1 3 9



You don't have to sing very well. It's punk. You just scream a lot. ^ But

of course the ostensible lack of technique can be performed with varying

degrees of proficiency—and effectiveness. The juxtaposition of complex

liturgical harmonies with screed-like growled and shrieked feminist oratory

implicitly asks you to consider all those issues I said audiences seemed most

adamantly to want

to

ignore: the relationship between faith, feminism, and

performance aesthetics.

I am also no expert in Russian liturgical music, although I did my

best in

my

little uke cover

to

replicate the harm onies accurately. It

w s

only

after I spoke at the Jordan Cen ter, however, that I learned of the source of

the refrain. M inutes after the panel ended, I received an

e mail

from Katya

Ermolaev, a PhD candidate in musicology at Princeton who's writing a

dissertation on Prokofiev, but was also preparing a conference presenta-

tion on Pussy Riot and Russian liturgical music. She had listened to the

live feed of the panel from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where

she held a fellowship. I did realize, she asked, that the hymnal section of

Pu nk Prayer was based on one ofth e movements from Rachm aninoff's

Vespers Um , no. But that was pretty interesting. Still, it would be entirely

naive to think that the point was to juxtapose rea l music (the refrain)

with antimusic in the screed-like verses, just

as,

to my mind, it would be a

misreading to understand the action at Christ the Savior as antireligious.

Th ere is something equally com pelling in the shifts between two women's

voices there—one menacingly deep, one arrestingly shrill—as there is in

the harmonized hymnal voices. In fact, they are the same voices. That's

kind of the point.

I realize there is a certain parallel between making these kinds of

musicological observations about the construc tion of Pu nk Prayer and

crafting a little handmade ukulele cover of the song that hopes to repli-

cate its harmonic and also dramatic contrasts in miniature. That is, there

is something maybe disconcertingly domesticating about both of these

gestures. And maybe there is also a parallel to knitting a balaclava out of

organic wool, when the proper spirit of the thing would be to just rip the

eyeholes and the mouthhole out of a neon stocking. Maybe the proper spirit

of Pu nk Pray er can really only be achieved by embracing, rather than

denying, the destructive potential of antimusicality, just s the spirit o fthe

balaclava can only be achieved thro ugh ripping thin gs up .

Violetta Volkova was right that day about one thing. My hand-knit

balaclava really was too hot. T here 's no way I could have sat through tha t

forum at the NY U Law School with that thing on my head— though my

law school colleagues looked at it a little uneasily anyway: You do rea l-

ize, tha t thing 's illegal, somebody nervously joked. And, in fact, after the

forum, a young Occupy activist approached m e to ask how much I knew

1 4 0 Browning • This alaclava Is

Too

Hot



Figure

3

Photo

of

author

in

hand knit balaclava. Courtesy the author

about the New York mask laws. I hadn t known much, but I did by the end

of that afternoon.

Of

course, what those laws tell you

is

that statutes

are

invoked here, as in Russia, when actions are viewed as a potential political

threat.

Here s the clause in question from N.Y. PEN. LAW

240.35: NY

Code— Section 240.35: Loitering:

4.

Being masked or in any manner disguised by unusual or unnatural attire

or facial alteration, loiters, remains

or

congregates

in a

public place with

other

persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons

so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such con-

duct is not unlawful w hen

it

occurs in connection with a masquerade party

or like

entertainment

if

when

such

entertainment is

held

in

city which has

promulgated regulations

in

connection with such affairs, permission is first

obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities.

The Occupy activist who approached me at the law school w as, needless

to say, interested in the topic because of the use of Guy Fawkes masks in

the movement. As with many aspects ofthe Occupy movement, there are

divergent interpretations

of

the significance

of

the use

of

this particular

mask. Some reference the historical figure of Guy Fawkes as a symbol

Social Text 6 • Fall 2013

4



of resistance to a corrupt or oppressive government, some distance the

movement from a possible association with violence that Guy Fawkes

might invoke, others appreciate the gallows humor they find in the popu-

lar cultural source of a graphic novel, while a few express concern that

Warner Bros, owns the copyright on what some consider the face of the

movement. But the particular woman who expressed her concern to me

about the legality of masked protest was more interested in the possibility

of anonymity and group affiliation—the I am Spartacus maneuver—

which has been the primary tactical explanation of the use of masks

among various twentieth- and twenty-first-century protest movements,

including the Zapatistas, the black blocs of the antiglobalization move-

ment, and, of course. Pussy Riot.

Subcomandante Marcos has famously waxed poetic on the ideo-

logical implications of facelessness. He released a video communiqué in

which he proposed to show his face, holding up a mirror and proceeding

to unmask himself only to reveal a series of faces of various races, ages,

and genders.

Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe,

a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a

Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal... a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy

in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on

the Metro at 10 pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums,

an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in

the mountains.'

El Sup's interest in the political potentiality of the mask contrasts, of

course, with a straightforward notion of what Marx might have intended

in referencing the falsehood associated with the Charaktermaske—a notion

succinctly put forth by David Harvey: Once [capitalism's] mask is torn

off and its mysteries have been laid bare, it is easier to see what has to be

done and why, and how to set about doing it. ^ But Marcos's mask is a

mask of another order: a mask that simultaneously reveals the false face

of neoliberalism even as it understands that one will never arrive at a truly

naked face—nor perhaps should one hope to. Slavoj Zizek, who has hardly

been one to celebrate Marcos's poetics or his tactics, appears, at least on

this point, to concur:

We must avoid the simple metaphors of de-masking, of throwing away the

veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality. We can see why Lacan, in

his Seminar

on the

Ethic of Psychoanalysis distances himself from the liberat-

ing gesture of saying finally that the emperor has no clothes. The point

is as Lacan puts it, that the emperor is naked only beneath his clothes, so

if there is an unmasking gesture of psychoanalysis, it is closer to Alphonse

142 Browning

This alaclava

Is

Too Hot



Figure 4. Screen shot of Subcomandante Marcos from YouTube video Subcomandante Marcos sin

p s mont ñ s www .youtube.com/watch?v=qRnoJt7P TDE accessed 8 May 2013)

Allais's well-known joke, quoted by Lacan: somebody points at a woman

and utters a horrified cry, Look at her, what a shame, under her clothes,

she is totally n aked. '

The closing statements of Samutsevich, Tolokonnikova, and Alyo-

khina at their trial repeatedly gestured toward this counterlogical logic.

The theatricality of their action in the church was an attempt to alert

churchgoers to the ways in which Putin was stagecrafting their reli-

gious experience in order to manipulate them politically. The ostensible

obscenity of the group's music was an attempt to reveal the obscenity of

the church's complicity with a corrupt state. And on the masks: Maria

Alyokhina said, Th is trial is not only a malignant and grotesque mask, it

is the 'face' o fthe governm ent's dialogue with the people of our country. *

If mask is to reveal something, is it necessary for it to perform its

own capacity for destruction? Do the eyeholes and mouthholes need to

be gouged out? M ust we insist on the antimusicality of Pu nk Prayer in

order to see its political potential? Or is the interest, maybe, in recognizing

the speciousness of such a division—between theatricality and antithe atri-

cality, masking and unmasking , musicality and antimusicality? After the

minor craft debacle of my too-hot hand-knit balaclava, I decided to go fur-

ther down the path of domestication, rather than turn ing back. I got some

lighter-weight yarn, and started up a little cottage industry: balaclavas for

the size 2- 6X set, wee unrelenting feminists. T hey are cool, lightweight.

Social Text 6 •

Fall 2013

143



Figure 5 Minifeminist in balaclava Courtesy the author

colorful and

they stretch when the grrrls start to grow. Which they will.

I'm still taking orders.

Notes

1. Pussy Riot has consistently and continuously insisted that, in the words

of Yekaterina S am utsevich, It was an act of feminist art and should be treate d as

such. I find the te-rras feminist and ar t equally significant. Quoted in Marlow Stern,

Sundan ce's Best Docume ntary: 'Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, ' Newsweek/The Daily

Beast 26 Janua ry 2013, w ww .thedailybeast .com/art icles/2013/01/26/sund ance-s

-best-documentary-pussy-riot-a-punk-prayer.html.

2. Sprechstimme is a style of vocalization between speech and song. The style

is associated with the Second Viennese School, and it was notably employed by Kurt

Weill.

3. James Brooke, Moscow G rrrl Band Sets Krem lin 's Teeth on Ed ge,

Voice of America I Russia Watch 19 M arch 2012, blogs.voanews.com/russia-watch

/2012 /03/19 /. Brooke elaborates that the group is open to women recru its with

limited m usical talents.

144

Browning

This Balaclava Ts Too Hot



4.

N.Y. PE N. LAW § 240.35: NY Code— Section 240 .35: Loitering, Find-

Law, codes. lp.f indlaw.eom/nycod e/PEN /THR EE/N /240/240.35 (accessed 19 April

2013).

5.

Ma rcos Is Gay, Social Justice (zine), no. 27, 19 October 1997, rpt. Green

Left, 5 Novem ber 1997, w ww .greenleft.org.au/node/16118.

6. David Harvey,

The Enigma of Capital and the rises of apitalism

(Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2010), 260.

7. Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (Lond on: Verso, 1989), 28.

8. M aria Alyokhina's closing statemen t, Puss y Riot Closing Stateme nts,

t rans. Mari jeta Bozovic, Maksim Hanukai and Sasha Senderovich, n 1 magazine,

13 Aug ust 2012 , npluson em ag.com /pussy-riot-closing-statements.

ocial Text

116 •

all 2 01 3 1 4 5



C o p y r i g h t o f S o c i a l T e x t i s t h e p r o p e r t y o f D u k e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s a n d i t s c o n t e n t m a y n o t b e

c o p i e d o r e m a i l e d t o m u l t i p l e s i t e s o r p o s t e d t o a l i s t s e r v w i t h o u t t h e c o p y r i g h t h o l d e r ' s

e x p r e s s w r i t t e n p e r m i s s i o n . H o w e v e r , u s e r s m a y p r i n t , d o w n l o a d , o r e m a i l a r t i c l e s f o r

i n d i v i d u a l u s e .

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