Read & Riot

Nadya Tolokonnikova

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780062741592
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Libertad política

"Stylish, striking, and elegantly packaged...as indispensible to confronting, say, your domineering mother-in-law or your local city council as it is to helping foment an ongoing and ever-escalating insurrection against, say, a sexist, racist, nepotistic power-mad oligarchy threatening to destory democracy as we know it...My advice: Buy one "--VOGUE

From artist, activist, and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, a guerilla guide to radical protest and joyful political resistance

The face of modern protest is wearing a brightly colored ski mask.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, founding member of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot, is a creative activist, professional protestor, brazen feminist, shocking visual artist, and force to be reckoned with. Her spontaneous, explosive approach to political action has involved jumping over barbed wire, kissing police officers, giving guerilla performances in crowded subway cars, and going on a hunger strike to protest the abuse of prisoners. She's been horse-whipped by police in Sochi, temporarily blinded when officers threw green paint in her eyes, and monitored by the Russian government. But what made Nadya an activist icon overnight happened on February 21, 2012, when she was arrested for performing an anti-Putin protest song in a Moscow church.

She was sent to a Russian prison for 18 months and emerged as an international symbol of radical resistance, as calls to "Free Pussy Riot" resounded around the world. With her emblematic ski mask, black lipstick, and unwavering bravery, Nadya has become an emissary of hope and optimism despite overwhelming and ugly political corruption.

Read & Riot is structured around Nadya's ten rules for revolution (Be a pirate! Make your government shit its pants! Take back the joy!) and illustrated throughout with stunning examples from her extraordinary life and the philosophies of other revolutionary rebels throughout history. Rooted in action and going beyond the typical "call your senator" guidelines, Read & Riot gives us a refreshing model for civil disobedience, and encourages our right to question every status quo and make political action exciting—even joyful.

Rule № 1

BE A PIRATE

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Look for the truth that explodes existing boundaries and definitions. Follow your instincts and you’ll get a chance to break prevailing rules so beautifully you may even end up establishing a new norm, a new paradigm. Nothing frozen is perfect.

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In my own country I am in a far off land.

I am strong but have no power.

I win all yet remain a loser.

At break of day I say goodnight.

When I lie down I have great fear of falling.

FRANÇOIS VILLON

I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

THOMAS PAINE, RIGHTS OF MAN

Words

pirate people’s republic

“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” So says Michel Foucault.

If you are eager to eat your old identity and turn it into fertilizer for somebody else, you’re going to burn, and your flesh will be violently and rudely scattered all over the planet, and birds will peck your liver. But it’s rewarding. You’re going to rise from the ashes, renewed, young, and beautiful—forever.

I want to intensify my life. I want to reach maximum density, live nine lives in one. It’s a search for lives, not experiences. As I see it, a search for experiences is a Diet Coke, fat-free version of seeking to have nine lives in one. There’s no time when I’m just living by default, just because I was told “it’s supposed to be like that.” I don’t take that as a valid statement.

Punk culture has taught us that being moderate and restrained is often the wrong choice. When your intuition is telling you to leave moderation behind, let it go.

the international waters of piracy

I’m suspicious about all kinds of limitations that have been imposed on me. Sex, nationality, race, hair color, the timbre of my voice, the way I fuck or brush my teeth.

If I can be helpful at all, it is by offering the perspective of a human being who’s not particularly Russian, or Chinese, or American, who’s trying to live and breathe in her own way.

The perspective of a pirate.

As a pirate, I’m a sailor and an adventurer. But as a pirate I know too how crucial it is to have your community, people you trust who are committed enough to walk with you on a guerrilla’s path, if needed. My home is in my heart and in the hearts of those in my tribe.

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NEVER TRY TO GIVE A DEFINITION OF PUNK

Being a punk is about constantly surprising. It’s not about having a mohawk hairstyle and keeping it your whole life. Being a punk means systematically changing the image of yourself, being elusive, sabotaging cultural and political codes.

Punk is a method. Bach and Handel are my main punk influences. I don’t like the concept of a punk subculture, where you are really stuck in the image. The performance artist Alexander Brener criticized a person who wears skinny jeans, tears them, and considers himself punk as fuck. Punk demands more. On the first day, tear your jeans; on the second, wear stolen Louboutin shoes; on the third, shave your head; and on the fourth, grow butt-length hair somehow. Undermine, transform, exceed expectations. That’s what punk means to me.

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Another job of mine is to be an investigator of life and political orders. My art is to sharpen my mind and keep my eyes open and clear. I promised myself to remain critical and, if I have to, be ready to perform coldhearted analysis, dissection, penetration. . . . At the same time I oblige myself to stay loving, open, and connected: sympathy and compassion are the only truly reliable friends for someone who thrills at being finely tuned to the world, who wants to resonate with the time she lives in, who’s thirsty to hear the music and harmonies of the universe that are being played on an incomprehensible variety of strings.

“The intellectual as buccaneer—not a bad dream,” notes the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk writing about Pasolini’s Pirate Writings. “We have scarcely ever seen ourselves that way. The buccaneer cannot assume fixed standpoints because he is constantly moving between changing fronts.”

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It’s fascinating to see when somebody is trying to think about reality in the clumsy and constipated terms that empires use. I never got it. I’ve never understood the empty talk about enemies of the state, external enemies . . . the list is pretty much endless, for example:

Russkies	Mexicans
commies	witches
Uncle Sam	lesbians
Muslims	Pussy Riot
Yankee pigs

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ←insert your name here

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ←insert your mom’s name here

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When you want to see and tell the truth, you’re leaving the area of the known (by default), so I can guarantee you’ll look ridiculous, sometimes silly, not be well respected at all; and you should let yourself love your failures, because they constitute your path to the sublime. Enter the international waters of the unknown, where the only business is being a pirate.

Nothing frozen is perfect. The queer, liquid world is real; it’s nice here. Otherwise you have what? A belief that dog people should marry dog people and cat people should marry cat people?

As a liquid you’re free to take any shape and to mix with other liquids too. It’s no fun to be ice; I’d rather be water. Seduce and let yourself be seduced into radical questioning.

Deeds

no borders

I was born in Norilsk, a very industrial and very Siberian city. Siberia is the shape of a giant cock. My hometown is located at the head. Every summer I’d go to my grandma’s place, which is right between the balls and a four-hour flight away.

The air in my hometown consists of heavy metals with a little oxygen. Life expectancy is ten years less than in other regions of Russia, the risk of cancer two times higher.

I grew up around persistent, independent, focused adults. My mother is a maximalist and has an incredible work ethic, as does her husband, my stepfather. My mom can point at a dog and tell you it’s a cat, and you know, you’ll believe her. She has a gift to convince and lead. My father is in charge of all the divine insanity in my life. He’s a writer, artist, cynical romantic, stoic, nomad, adventurer . . . and, of course, pirate. “When she was four,” my father writes about me, “Nadya absolutely, consciously, strictly, and business-like said to me, ‘Papa! Never force me anything.’ I don’t remember what the occasion was, but I immediately understood it was a declaration of independence. And I have never ‘forced her anything.’ I have only motivated her. My point of departure was her inner willingness to do something. I cultivated her from within, like a crocus blossom.”

My father is not a religious person in any usual fashion, but he understands the importance of culture and a language that speaks about transcendent experience. We would visit Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches, mosques, synagogues, and even Hare Krishna events when I was a kid. My father imposed no dogmas on me. We would freely, joyfully, playfully discuss our different impressions and write down some of them.

Where am I from? I’m from the most polluted city on the planet. I’m from the Milky Way. I’m from Russian literature and Japanese theater. I’m from every city where I fought or fucked. I’m from jail and I’m from the White House. I’m from punk records and from Bach’s compositions, from my obsession with turquoise, coffee, and loud music.

* * *

When your teen crush is Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian revolutionary poet, you’re fucked. Sooner or later you will end up in politics. I was fourteen years old, and I thought the coolest thing in the universe was doing investigative journalism.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” my parents’ friends would ask me. I don’t like the whole idea of the question, that I have to define right now once and for all who I’m going to be. “I want to study philosophy,” I’d say.

“But that’s insane, who will pay you to be a philosopher? There is no such job as a philosopher.” If I’m refusing to define myself anyway, what makes you think I’d want to be labeled for a monetary reason? I didn’t feel ready to wrap myself in glittery paper to be sold.

I didn’t read leftist books at that time. But our teenage intuitions usually are purely to the left (and we’re right about them). I’m aware that I do sound fantastically naive, but I’m not going to say s...