Nadya Tolokonnikova: Pussy Rioting Now
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Nadya Tolokonnikova is not fucking around. A member of the anarchist feminist group Pussy Riot, she was convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012, and sentenced to two years imprisonment. She was 23 years old. Her unapologetic art, activism and outspoken opinions about the state of the world have defined her as one of the leading voices in the new feminist freedom fight. She published a book in 2018 called Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism. We caught up over over zoom – I was in New Zealand and she called in from an undisclosed location – and talked about everything under the sun from insecurity, keeping our heads together, and what punk means in 2020.
Episode 7 of The Art of Asking Everything: Nadya Tolokonnikova: Pussy Rioting Now is out now wherever you get your podcasts.
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Show notes:
Description
Nadya Tolokonnikova is a Russian conceptual artist, political activist and co-founder of Vladimir Putin’s least favorite band, Pussy Riot.
In 2012, she was convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” after a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and served two years in prison.
She is the author of “How to Start a Revolution” and “Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism.” Her prison correspondence with philosopher Slavoj Žižek was compiled into the book, “Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj.”
In this interview we talked about coping with a pandemic, Putin’s never-ending reign, storming the Russian Parliament, the influence of riot grrrls, female empowerment, the advantages of being a multimedia artist, building an institution as a statement of punk, creating your own rules, rebelling against expectations, reuniting with your parents, and the importance of reading books when you have lost your freedom.
@tolokno on Twitter
@nadyariot on Instagram.
Check out everything from music videos to anti-surveillance makeup tutorials on Pussy Riot’s YouTube
www.youtube.com/channel/
Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism
www.harpercollins.com/
Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj
www.goodreads.com/en/book/
Get your Destroy the Patriarchy merchandise at pussyriot.store
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CREDITS:
Thank you so much to my guest, Nadya.
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Links to her music, books, merch, live performances, and more in the show notes.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
The Art of Asking Everything
Nadya Tolokonnikova: Pussy Rioting Now
Amanda
This is The Art of Asking Everything. I am Amanda Fucking Palmer.
And as I record this, it is Monday November 9th, 2020. Biden has just won the presidential election. Donald Trump may or may not quietly into the night – probably not – and I am personally, petulantly angry that my life is hard, because my five-year-old child won’t go to bed so that I can go into the kitchen and record the intro to my last-minute podcast with Nadya from Pussy Riot. And I lie there and I think about what a coward I am, because Nadya from Pussy Riot was in prison for two fucking years when was in her early 20s, with a small child of her own back then, and I imagine her lying in bed at night in prison, thinking about her child, and I think what problems do I actually have at all? And then I think that, ya know, all problems are still problems, I think about my conversation with Nadya, and I think Nadya would probably agree.
Nadya Tolokonnikova is a Russian conceptual artist, political activist, and co-founder of Vladimir Putin’s least-favourite band, Pussy Riot. In 2012, she was convicted of hooliganism, motivated by religious hatred, after a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and she was sentenced to two years imprisonment. She is the author of How To Start A Revolution, and a book called Read and Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide To Activism, as well as Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj, which documents her time as a political prisoner. And she’s also been the subject of multiple documentaries.
And Nadya and I sat down, screen-to-screen, and talked at length on a Zoom call a couple of weeks ago. I was in Aotearoa New Zealand, and she was in an undisclosed location. And we spoke about coping with the pandemic, Putin, Trump (RIP), how she found punk, what punk even is, and means to people, how we decide what mediums to use artistically when we want to speak with art and music, how prison brought Nadya closer to her mom, the importance of books and information, and how most importantly right now how we find solutions for people left outside the systems. And what we can do about that right now.
Comrades and critics alike, please welcome: Nadya from Pussy Riot.
Amanda
Thank you so fucking much for doing this, and coming on this podcast, especially right now, with what is going on in the world, oh my god. 200,000 people marching in Belarus, 200,000 people dead in America… How are you? Skipping everything, just how are you doing right now, as a human being?
Nadya
I’m trying to develop myself, I’m trying to stay creative, and it’s working out good for me. Obviously it’s really pressing and emotional in a bad way to read the news about the pandemic, and it’s sad to read that people are dying, but personally, to me, I guess I was trying to use my prison experience as an example for treating this pandemic. So it’s not a pleasant or positive experience, but you can try to make it work for you.
So in the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to apply certain routines for myself, like, I don’t know, exercising, learning, reading books, learning new skills, easy stuff that a lot of people are doing right now, and it really works for me. I feel like I’m gonna get out of this pandemic, if me and my family members and my loved ones are going to be healthy, I’m going to get out of here a stronger person, because I have more time with myself, and with people who I love, and that’s really cool. It forced me to stay in one place for longer, and that’s cool. We tour constantly.
Amanda Palmer
Me too!
Nadya
We tour constantly.
Amanda
Yeah, and if you’re really fucking busy travelling, busy person, that’s very confronting.
Nadya
How do you feel right now? What about you?
Amanda
Thank you for asking. I feel really strange.
Nadya
Of course.
Amanda
I’ve been away from home for six months by accident. I’ve become a single mother, sort of by accident. Like, none of this was in the fucking plan. I just feel like I am in survival mode, but also, at the same time, I’m in one of the most beautiful and safest places on the planet, so I’m like, overburdened with gratitude that I’m not in New York, that I’m not in Australia. The synchronicity, and the weird coincidence that I was on tour in NEw Zealand for one week. One week. And then this is just where it happened to happen. So I happened to be here, when it happened to happen. And just trying to synthesise all that, and the weird survivor guilt that I lucked out, but also all this shitty shit has happened in my life at the same time. And I wake up every day going, this is it. And I’m sure you get that. Every day, there’s shit that you can’t believe how unlucky you are, and simultaneously how lucky you are, whether you are in a prison, or in a hospital, or in a home, or whatever. There’s a pile on either side.
Nadya
What are your practices to stay sane?
Amanda
Yeah, my main thing has been to do less work, and to spend more time with my 5-year-old. He’s the thing that’s kind of grounding me. On a very practical level, I’ve started going to bed, no shit, at 8 o’clock, for the first time in my whole life.
Nadya
What, really?
Amanda
First time in my whole life, I’m a night person, I’m a touring person, I’m a performer, I’m used to going to bed at fucking 3 o’clock in the morning, on and off tour, and waking up at around 10 or 11, all my life. And in the last few months, I’ve started going to bed with my son at around 8 or 9, and I wake up at 5. And I’m trying to drink less wine. Those are my two things right now.
I have a lot of things to ask you. And I also reached out to my Patreon – Patreon is one of the things I wanna ask you about too, cos I know you have and run a page – and I asked my patrons if they had any questions for you, and our questions are all kind of merged together in one big pile, but first of all: You are fucking loved by people, just so you know. If you needed a daily affirmation and reminder, you have so much respect, and so much love and admiration from so many people, at least in my little world. If you needed to know that today, you should know that.
Nadya
I need to know it. Thank you so, so much for your support guys, girls, non-binary people.
Amanda
All beings. I always wanna work on the assumption that this podcast is going to be listened to by people who know very little, or nothing, about you. Even if I give a very well-researched and lovely intro, which I’m sure I did. And for the sake of the argument, let’s say you had an American 12-year-old girl, intelligent enough American 12-year-old girl, who had no idea where Russia is, who you are, what you have done, and all she’s heard is this little intro, that this thing called Pussy Riot exists, and this woman named Nadya exists. How would you explain to her what your country is, what’s happening there, and what was happening there, let’s say back in 2012, and what you did? In a way that a 12-year-old could understand it. How would you explain that story?
Nadya
My daughter is 12 years old, she’s from Russia though, so she would not be that person, but I can relate to 12 years old really well.
Let’s start our little fairytale. In 2011, when you were 3 years old, in a country called Russia, Putin decided to be the President for the third time. And he never asked his people if they wanted to see him as the President for the third time, they just announced it in a little gathering of white heterosexual males, who just told us on all the media channels that are controlled by Kremlin, by Putin himself, that Putin is going to be the President for the next six years. Putin, at the time, wanted to be the President forever, basically to be an emperor, and he was looking up to other dictators like Kim Jong-Un in North Korea. He also likes the leader of China. So that was his big example.
So when he said he’s going to be the President for the third fucking time, we were deeply troubled. And we realised that something is going to change in my country, which was not ideal. Our democracy was not ideal at the time, but we still were able to do certain actions without being punished. Like, for example, one of my favourite actions that we’ve done at the time was called Storming of the White House. In 2008, we stormed the White House, we projected a giant 40 metres long skull and bones on the Parliament of Russia. We call it White House as well as in the United States. And we stormed it. A group of people ran, climbed on the fence, six metres fence, and around through the territory of the White House, and left from another side of the fence. And the idea of that action was to show people that actually, the power is much more fragile and unprotected than they like to be seen. And if a group of anarchist kids can undo it, then imagine what if millions of people would go in front of the White House and refuse to leave until Putin is gone.
So those kind of actions, they went unpunished in 2008. And in 2011, that year we realised that if Putin is going to become President again, that will mean that the amount of freedoms that we are going to have are going to shrink. We didn’t want that to happen. We decided to form a band that’s called Pussy Riot, because we were fans of riot grrrls, we wanted something like that to happen in Russia. And we wanted to bring it to the streets, we wants to perform it in guerilla style, for everyone on the streets, without permissions, because we would never get a permission to perform our songs, because they were all about feminist rebellion, LGBTQ rights, and fuck you to Putin. You would never have permission to perform that in my country.
So we performed at places like public transport, and the Red Square, and at the fancy, glamorous shops where people buy things and rarely think about politics, they rarely think about human rights. We went illegally, guerilla again, and we went to fashion shows, to make people think about politics, and how important it is. We were singing for political prisoners on the roof of the jail.
And our performance that brought us to jail happened in the church. But it wasn’t a real church, it was a trade centre of Christ the saviour, as we call it in Russia. Official name is Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, but in fact, they have a lot of luxury shops. Inside, they have a luxury car wash. There are a lot of rooms for rent, that if you have enough money, and if you are good enough, you can rent them, to make a concert. So some performers who praise Vladimir Putin, they actually perform in the Cathedral, so it’s not so unusual.
And we went there without permission, as I said before we would never get it, and also we didn’t have any money at the time, we lived for six years by shoplifting. We didn’t want to sell our labour to an unequal, unjust system. And we performed 40 seconds of the song, and then we were kicked out by the guards. They were not offended, they were annoyed possibly by a bunch of girls singing feminist songs.
Amanda
Being loud.
Nadya
Singing about protest. Being loud, yeah. We performed exactly at the place where the patriarch of the orthodox church would normally make his prayers, his performances. And one of our points was that it’s really weird that in these times when, with all the feminist and female empowerment that’s happening around us, Russian Orthodox church is not reflecting it at all, and still women cannot be priests, and still Orthodox religion is one of the most conservative powers in our country, that constantly calls for things like dress code for women, they’re publicly talking about things like if she was raped, she was asking for it, typical slut-shaming. So Russian Orthodox church is not progressive, to say the least.
And we went there to talk about it. And we went there to start a dialogue, to start a conversation. And instead of talking to us, those guys have decided to imprison us. They put us in jail for two years. And it’s been a rough time, but we are out, and since we’ve been out, we kept working on the same issues, we just became stronger, we became more convinced in our activist philosophy. They proved us, the government proved us, that our activism is needed.
And unfortunately today, Russia has even more political prisoners. So if you can help them anyhow…
Amanda Palmer
At the end of this fairytale, you get out of prison a little early, in a move from the government. You said it was cynical. Their theatrical release of you was a bullshit move to just de-sully the brand of the winter Olympics. And there you were, reunited with your child first of all, back in the world with an infinite number of choices of what to do next. You could have done a lot of things in the spectrum. You could have just been like, fuck all of this, I need to take five years off, I’m tired, overwork yourself to death now that you’ve got a voice and a platform, and you know that people are listening.
One of the biggest questions I have for you is, not so much as an activist, but also not discounting that, because of course you’re an activist, but as an artist, you got to choose which medium to work in, or try to do every medium. So you put a book out, and you re putting videos out, and doing actions everywhere at once, but having thought about it, and maybe your opinion has even changed since getting out of prison, and maybe your opinion has even changed since Covid, when you look at all of these artistic outlets, or don’t even call them artistic outlets, just call them media outlets, I’m gonna talk to you this way, no this way, no this way, what do you see, especially right now, as being the most effective way for you to not just do what you wanna do, and say what you wanna say, but also be a fulfilled fucking human being, so that you’re not just going on a speaking tour, getting behind podiums going, I pump my fist and fuck Putin, but you can do it using all of these different containers, and you have to choose on a daily basis which container you’re gonna pick.
Nadya
By nature, I’m multi-media artist. And one of my mentors was a poet, a sculptor and architect, and now a writer, a musician… Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov, and a performance artist, first of all. I was first introduced to contemporary art by two men, by my dad, and by this person. I didn’t know him personally, but I saw him perform when I was 13 years old, and I decided that I’m going to live my life as Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov. So, the thing I was fascinated with is that he was constantly changing mediums in order to run from a certain identity, and it gave him freedom, when people would tell him, oh, you’re a poet, he would be like oh, no I’m not a poet, I’m drawing pictures, I’m a painter. And then oh, you’re a painter, he was like, oh no, I’m actually making sculptures. And he never was satisfied with just one label being stuck to him too much. So he was always somewhere in the middle.
I went to study philosophy to Moscow Statue University, and then I was reading Foucault, and I don’t know if it’s right or wrong conclusion from Foucault, but at least that’s what my artistic brain concluded from reading Foucault, and writing works on him, that I can find interesting angles, and kind of truth about life through being on the margin of things. On the intersection of different films. Cos then you have a really interesting point of view on everything happening.
So since early age, I’ve decided that that will be my life. When I got out of jail, I kind of just followed that method of combining different genres. And one of the genres became reinventing punk through thinking about what is actually punk today, 2013, in Russia. It occurred to me that actually, the most punk thing that I could do in 2014 was to build an institution. And a lot of people were not in agreement with me. I got a lot of criticism for building an institution, cos they were like…
Amanda
A lot of criticism from within your own scene?
Nadya
From punk community, yeah. It was in the line of, we have to fuck things up, and we have to be always against and stuff. And I was against, but I also remember about important tradition in punk movement of building alternative institutions, of building an alternative world, creating DIY institutions, labels, magazine, zines, it always was a part of punk culture. Not only going to the street, or to the main square, and telling everyone to fuck off, which is important, obviously.
In 2014, we decided to build an organisation that helps prisoners, provides them legal help first of all, helps them to fight against their prison system, and help them to go to all levels of courts that can protect their rights, from all the Russian courts to European Court of Human Rights. And then, when we realised that we make this important human rights work, but there is no one to write about it, and tell people about what’s going on in prisons, in a few months we’ve decided to start MediaZona, which is a media outlet, which exists up to this day, and it became one of the most influential independent media outlets. And it was really challenging, because I was 25, and my colleagues were around the same age, and we never had experience of building an institution. It was interesting, but we kind of succeed, because right now if you look at the amount of awards, and just attention and trust from people, from regular people in Russia, from media, from our colleagues, journalists, you’re gonna see that it’s a credible, awesome, fucking awesome institution.
So that was one of the mediums, but also we’ve decided that this platform that was given us, it’s not ours, really. So I felt kind of possessed in 2014, right after I got out of jail, I felt possessed, and not fully myself. I felt like I have to tell stories of other prisoners, I have to tell about prison conditions to as many people as possible, to everyone who wants to listen, so we travelled a lot, we gave a lot of lectures and speeches at European Parliament, to the Senate of the United States. And many other places, and colleges.
But then, in a year, I realised that I’m starting to lose myself. First of all, I’m an artist. I’m an activist, but first of all I’m an artist. So after a year of being possessed, and totally giving myself to the ativism, I realised that I needed to bring back the artist part. And I started to work on music, which became my main medium, and right now I’d say 70% of my time I spend coming up with new tunes, new tracks, and making music videos for them.
Music Break – Make America Great Again by Pussy Riot
Amanda
I wanna ask you a question, a simple, easy question, or maybe it’s not. But there you were, a teenager in Russia. How the fuck did you find out about riot grrrl? Like, who brought that into your life, where did it come from? Did it come from the internet, did it come from a store, did it come from someone you were having sex with? How did this poisonous, toxic, vile music get into your collection? Where did it come from?
Nadya
Well, I was not a teenager. When I was a teenager, I didn’t even have internet until I was 16. So I was growing up in a bubble of Russian culture, with little access to what’s happening outside. And then I moved to Moscow when I was 16, and in a few years… So I was kind of an adult, I was 20 when I learned about riot grrrls. We were working on a lecture about feminist art, and we called it punk feminism. It was a funny situation, we came up with the name punk feminism, because we thought it’s cool. We got booked at one event, and we started to prepare just a night in advance before the lecture, as we always do. And we realised that, oh, there is a riot grrrl movement over there, really far. But there is nothing like that here in Russia. So we had to come up with a Russian version of punk feminism.
And that night, when we were writing this lecture, well, obviously we compiled a lot of information about Western punk feminism, but also we had to point on something inside Russia, and we couldn’t find anything. So we had to record it that night. And we did it in a bathroom, we did it in my friend Kat’s apartment, and at the time she still lived with her dad, and her dad is super against feminism. But he didn’t like me, he thought I’m kind of a devil who’s trying to turn his nice daughter into feminism, all that stuff. And he even witnessed against me in the court later. He was trying to prove that his daughter never saw them that way, and she was totally influenced and manipulated by me, she wasn’t on the case. But anyway… So yeah, it was an interesting moment of trying to record the first Pussy Riot song.
Amanda
You’re going to record a song, but what had you heard before going in to record that song, that created any kind of idea of what punk was, or what it sounded like? What had you already heard, like what ingredients were there in your palette to know what punk even sounded like? Clearly you knew the concept, and you had an idea about it, but how did you know what to do?
Nadya
Well, we had my friend’s dad. And we wanted to reply him in an artistic way, to tell him about the importance of punk. What had I heard? Well, I’ve heard a lot of stuff, but it was not particularly… I mean, it was not as feminist as I wanted it to be. I went to Iggy Pop’s concert, I loved… of course, David Bowie’s not punk, but in my weird imagination, he is punk, because of his revolutionary aesthetics. I’ve been listening to Nina Hagen… Patti Smith…
Amanda
And so, where did that music come from?
Nadya
Bikini Kill.
Amanda
Like, how did you know…
Nadya
From torrents.
Amanda
From torrents, so basically from the internet? Just going down the rabbit hole of the internet, and following the breadcrumb trail until you got to Iggy Pop, and you were like, that speaks to me.
Nadya
Iggy Pop came from a person I’ve been fucking with.
Amanda
Wait, fucking with? Or fucking? Or both?
Nadya
I mean, fucking with and fucking.
Amanda
When you toured, and you did a lot of touring, you must have had some ideas about punk, and the community, what it was, what it meant. And when you got out into the real world, did any of those illusions get shattered, about what punk meant, and what the faith that people had in punk, the belief system? And did you come up against the punk fascists, and did you come up against people pointing at you saying, that’s not fucking punk, and this is what is punk, and how dare you call yourself punk, and we are the punk police, and we’re here to arrest you… Did that happen while you were on tour in any way? Even in the press, did you find yourself feeling misunderstood?
Nadya
For sure. I’m still fighting with it, because I’m trying to redefine punk. And I think this is the most punk thing that a person can do, to think about what punk would sound and look like in 2020, or ten years from now, twenty years from now, try to imagine punk with the future, and make it now. Obviously it’s not gonna sound or look like it used to be, it used to look like in the 70s or 80s, 90s. To keep being punk, you have to constantly reinvent yourself. By doing that, it means that you cannot follow any rules, including punk rules. This puts you on a really difficult path, because on one hand, you are not with mainstream art, mainstream entertainment world community. You’re not making pop music. So you’re not playing by their rules, but at the same time, you’re not playing by the rules of punk as well, as a music genre. So you end up in between of all the genres. And even algorithms, they have uneasy times with this, because when I send my sounds to Spotify, there’s literally nowhere to put it. And the editors of Spotify playlists, even if they’re sympathetic to what I believe in, they don’t know where to put me. Cos it’s not exactly pop, it’s not metal, it’s not punk, it’s not alternative. Where would you put me?
Amanda
And in this way, you have fucking succeeded in your goal of trying to be like your un-pin-down-able mentor hero, because that’s often the key to some of the best artists, is, I don’t know, you fucking decide what to call this. It’s not my job! My job is to make this thing, and your shitty job is to try to explain it, and find a Spotify box to put it in.
Nadya
Hopefully they will do their job, and we’ll definitely continue our jobs. But I do have a lot of people coming at Pussy Riot shows, who meet me and other members later. Normally it’s white men in leather jackets…
Amanda
Oh no.
Nadya
… in their 40s or 50s, and possibly they drank a couple of beers already, so they’re slightly drunk, and they’re trying to explain to me what punk is, and why don’t you play guitar? That’s the biggest question.
Amanda
You can’t have punk without guitars. That’s not allowed! Didn’t you know that? That’s Punk 101!
Nadya
That’s awesome. Yeah, well right now, we’re actually playing a show with guitars, and I feel like a conformist because of that.
Amanda
You feel like you’re rebelling against your own rebellion of fuck guitars.
Nadya
Yeah yeah yeah. Well when I started to write pop music for the first time, it was 2015, I was trying to reinvent how Pussy Riot should sound, because when we made Pussy Riot for the first time, we didn’t care about sound at all. We cared about performances, we cared about performance art, making actions on the street, about our political statement, but we didn’t care about the songs. So in 2015, after I went through jail, I went through my activist period, when I gave myself fully to activism, I decided to focus on the creative side. And it actually brought me to pop sound for a while. I mean, a little bit weird, distorted pop sound, but still pop sound, because I was rebelling against expectations, people’s expectations. Cos when I was telling them I’m working on an album, or on an EP, everyone was like, oh, you must be having guitars and drums, and…
Amanda
And of course, it’s gonna sound just like Le Tigre, or some spectrum between Le Tigre and the Sex Pistols, and that’s exactly what it will sound like because that’s your job because you’re a punk band.
Nadya
Yeah. So, as you, I never wanted to have a job. So I felt like that way…
Amanda
Wait a second! I never said I didn’t wanna have a job! I just wanted a job that I liked.
Nadya
Well, I personally never wanted to have a job. When I was a kid, when I was a teenager, I had a teacher who was giving us economy lessons, and she was one of those who loved neoliberal economy and stuff, and she was like, okay, there are 6% of the population who would rather be homeless than have a normal job. And she told it to us like, oh, look at those people, they are so disgusting. And then, I was like, oh, I’m actually proud to be those people, I’m for sure in this 6%. Cos I cannot be a subversive artist if I’m having a normal job. I just wanna make a remark, what I’m saying doesn’t mean that you cannot be a subversive artist with having a normal job, because if you figured it out for yourself, that’s good for you. But that’s how I felt in the time.
Amanda
And can I just challenge that and say maybe we are allowed to call being a subversive artist a job? Maybe that’s the fucking answer! I was just literally talking with a friend this morning about that, and it’s something that I wrote about a lot in my book, is that I was raised in a culture where being an artist was not considered a real job. It just wasn’t in the list of jobs that you are allowed to want as a child. And then subversive artist is one step beyond that, like yeah, you could maybe want to play violin in a classical orchestra, okay, maybe that’s a job, kind of. But you can’t want to be Yoko Ono, or be a performance artist, or actually go make bizarre, possibly non-paying street art, that doesn’t have a direct source of payment or salary. Cos that’s not a job. And actually, that’s bullshit! You can make that a job. You’ve made that a job, I’ve made that a job. A job can be fucking anything, as long as you can pay rent and stay alive. And yeah, maybe it’s just about redefining what we can teach a child what a job is. And maybe we just have some piles where it’s like, those are more normal jobs: banker, shoemaker, plumber, politician. But over here, here are some other jobs, here are some other options. You can still make a living, but they’re not really on the normal list, but they’re fucking valid.
Nadya
I struggled a lot as a kid with that. I mean, the reason why I didn’t speak with my mom for years is because I picked the job of a philosopher.
Amanda
No, wait a second, that’s really not a job. No, just kidding, it’s a job. If you can get a job, you can get a job.
Nadya
My mom was just making fun of me for three years in a row, cos I knew that I’m going to study philosophy, and I would be like, I don’t know, when I Was hanging with my grandmother, my grandmother treated me seriously, but all her friends, they were just making fun of me, like who is going to pay her for being a philosopher?!
Amanda
Are they all eating their words now? Because you are actually kind of getting paid to be a philosopher, who works in different media?
Nadya
Well, my mom is pleasantly surprised, cos she told me that I have to get a real education first, and then I can get whatever I want, and so first I have to become a lawyer, or an economist. Two options.
Amanda
Great options.
Nadya
And then I kind of ran from my house. Well, I didn’t literally run, but I just told my mom that I collected enough money to get a ticket for a plane, one way plane from my city to Moscow, and to try to enter university. So she couldn’t do anything, cos I already finished my school, and she couldn’t keep me physically. So she just had to agree.
Amanda
So how does your family feel about what you’re doing right now, and how do you get along with them? Is it easy, is it hard, is it complicated?
Nadya
It’s really easy. My mom started to support me again when I ended up in prison. So in a weird way, I have to thank prison, and I have to thank Putinf or bringing me back with my mom.
So at some point, yellow media, yellow journalists, they’re pro-Putin, pro-Kremlin, they knew that I had a beef with my mom, and they made an interview with her, where they ask her about like, what do you think about your daughter, what do you think about what your daughter is doing? And they hoped, and they knew, that my mom would be like, oh I think she’s a slut. Things like that. And she didn’t do it. On the opposite, she was like, I support my kid, she’s awesome, she’s telling the truth, she’s the best. And I read it when I was in prison, and I felt like something really important happened in my life. And since then, we’re friends.
And with my dad, they’re separated with my mom since I was 5, so it was completely two different stories. My dad is super artistic and weird, and so I’ve never had actual problems with him, and he was teaching me how to question authorities. So for him it was natural, what I’ve done with my life.
Amanda
Good.
Nadya
What about you?
Amanda
You know, my parents, I think they’re proud of me, but also confused by me.
Nadya
Why?
Amanda
And that’s just the ongoing paradox of being me. But the older I get, I think the more peace we were able to make with each other. And also, the less I take for granted how much freedom I had growing up in a house where they weren’t musicians, they weren’t artists, but they encouraged my weird passion towards theatre, towards art, towards doing plays in the backyard, and staying up all night and playing piano. They were sometimes irritated by me, and they would tell me that I was making too much noise or whatever, but they never discouraged the concept that being an artist was possible. They never told me it was a stupid idea, and that I should get a real job. A lot of the rest of culture was telling me that, but my parents never did, and the older I get, and the more artists I talk to, and the more origin stories I synthesise, I really don’t take that for granted. I appreciate them, that they just didn’t get in the way of this big, weird thing I wanted to do.
Nadya
It’s a lot.
Amanda
Yeah, just not getting in the way is huge. And that’s true in general with a child. My son just turned 5, and I’m just trying so hard not to shut anything down. I know how dangerous it can be, and how fragile they are, and you can say one offhanded negative thing, and a whole world will shut down, because they’re so vulnerable to your opinion. And I just want him to think like, anything’s possible, I can do anything, I can be interested in anything, I can be good at anything, regardless of gender, and this culture, and where we are, and I just try so hard to stand back. Which, as an opinionated person, is fucking hard to do. Right? It’s like, a real humbling as a parent. I don’t know if you’ve gone through the same thing with your daughter, but I fight that all the time. The urge to tell him my opinion. And I just don’t. Cos I want him to have his own.
Nadya
Isn’t it a paradox for a progressive parent to let your kid have more conservative views than you have?
Amanda
If they want.
Nadya
Imagine how challenging it is. I didn’t have it with my daughter yet, but she’s super progressive, but she will want one day… I think it will be the most challenging thing for me, but I’ll work really hard to accept it, because otherwise I’ll be just like any other conservative parent, who would not take what their kids are thinking as a real thing.
I think respect, and treating a kid as an adult, as a person, is the key. And that’s what my dad always was doing with me, even when I was a toddler, he was talking to me like I was a real person. And they can feel it. It really works. They listen.
Amanda
And the truth is, they are real people. They’re just young. And in a lot of ways, smarter than the older people. Wiser. Because they don’t have all of these cynical boxes that they’ve put their thoughts in like we have. And yeah, they’re smart. I look at my son sometimes, and I think he’s smarter than I am in a lot of ways. And I mean it. That’s not in a kitschy sentimental way, that’s like… He hasn’t unlearned how to be open-minded yet. And there’s a lot I could learn from him. He reminds me how fucking big the question can be.
Music Break – Look Mommy No Hands
I was looking at your YouTube channel, and I saw film called The Penal Colony, and it’s made by somebody else, but based on your story, and based on an open letter you wrote. I had a couple of questions about that. First of all, it’s really striking. I saw that David Lynch was thanked, and I was like, where the fuck did that come from? And also, this wasn’t a film made by you, starring you, constructed by you, but it’s obviously up on your official YouTube channel, so it’s probably blessed by you. Can you just tell me the story of it, cos I wanna know. And I also wanna go out and share it, but wanna know that I have your blessing to go out and share it, to just make sure that it’s not something that you did under duress.
Nadya
Well, I was not tortured to upload this video on my Youtube.
Amanda
Okay. That’s good to know.
Nadya
That’s good to know. Honestly, I had little to do with the creative side of this movie, cos I think the art team who decided to make this movie were inspired by my hunger strike, so at the time when they started work on the movie, and the script, I was still in jail. But then after I got out of jail in 2014, I met with the team, I met with the actress who played me, and they were really nice, and really interested in prison reform, they have views that I share, they’re leftists, and some of them are anarchists, and I felt like it’s amazing that a group of creative people want to make a story based on my prison letter. Because honestly, I didn’t expect my prison letter to have such a big impact as it had. So it’s been translated to English, it was published in the Guardian, and probably to other languages as well, and went all around the world, and it was impactful enough to make someone to make the whole movie about it. So I wouldn’t say it was flattering. But it was a gesture of solidarity, of global solidarity, that I religiously believe in. And so it was a good time.
A few years later, they sent me the film, and though it was really weird for me to look at an actress playing me…
Amanda
Yeah, how did it feel sitting there and watching your story depicted through somebody else’s lens?
Nadya
They captured some of the things really vividly. But I think the older I get, the older the movie gets, it was released in 2017, the more I accept it. Because in the beginning, when I first saw it, I was like, oh, it wasn’t exactly like this. Like, the penal colony looked different. I got some distance personally from my experience of the penal colony, and I realised that there is no way that those guys would get inside my actual penal colony, and film it in there. There is no way they would know how it looked like. At the time when I was in prison, I couldn’t tell them. It’s okay to have some sort of distance, symbolism? It’s okay that things are not looking in the movie exactly like they looked in my penal colony.
And it’s an important movie, and if you care about human rights and prisoner rights, you probably should watch it. Because it depicts the fight, it depicts my fight, and it wasn’t just me, it was my fellow prisoners. It was this big fight with our administration, that brought the administration to the court. So now the prison warden is facing years in jail for the slave labour system that he built.
Amanda
How does that feel?
Nadya
It feels amazing. I remember, one year ago, or two years ago, a few years ago, when I was in Costa Rica, I was doing something important in there, I’ll not tell you what. I was doing something important, and by the way, I’ve decided to go on the beach. And so I was sitting on the beach and reading the news about my ex-prison warden being brought to court trial for building the slave labour system, and I was like, this feels fucking awesome, because I remember how violent, emotionally violent he was to me. He was probably the first person who showed me what abusive relationships are. And I mean, we’re not in those kind of relationships, but he was emotionally torturing me. He would ask me to come to his office several times a week, and he would talk to me for hours about how small I am, and how big he is, and how he owns me, he owns my life right now, and he was living through, getting energy through realising how much power he has over me right now.
He also loves to read about me in the media, to know that actually, Pussy Riot is kind of influential, but right now, at this moment, I’m totally in his hands. And he was just sucking energy from that. So knowing that, experiencing all that, I definitely felt really rewarding, reading the news about his possible jail sentence.
Amanda
Yeah, you must have had a huge sense of justice being served.
Nadya
I didn’t expect it. I didn’t. When I wrote this letter, I was totally thinking that it’s gonna get lost. And many important things are getting lost in the media. And I was lucky.
Amanda
Especially now that you’ve got a little bit of space from 2012 and 2014, and especially all the stuff that came after it, and you have some perspective, and there was celebrity, and fame, and news, and attention for the right reasons, and maybe sometimes attention for the wrong reasons, do you look back and you feel like you learned, outside of your particular activism, and Russia, and the stuff that you were trying to get done, do you feel like you learned anything about the media, and celebrity, that really shocked you, and that really changed the way you looked at using it as a tool? Did you go in naively, think like, oh, all these celebrities wanna help me, so they must be aligned with my cause, only to realise that not everything out there is what it seems?
Nadya
Well, they don’t really wanna see me any more, because Pussy Riot is not such a hot topic right now. We kind of settled down as a movement, but I feel much more comfortable right here, right now, than right after our jail time, cos it was too overwhelming, and it was not something that I wanted, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I think one thing is when you always want to be a famous person, imagine if you go through this, you play this role in your head before it happens with you, and then it happens with you, and you’re totally fine with it. That wasn’t our case at all. So when Madonna and Yoko Ono would wanna meet us, I felt nothing, because I felt so emotionally overwhelmed by everything that was happening, so my emotional system just shut down, and didn’t feel anything. Also, I was experiencing big PTSD after prison, so that was really awkward.
So anyway, years after, I feel more comfortable, because everything went back to the scale I’m comfortable with.
And regarding dealing with media and celebrities, I think that’s okay that everyone has their own interests, but I have healthy scepticism about some of them. I think as long as first, you understand the context, as long as you understand motives, motivations of people that are talking to you, and as long as you know that you can tell whatever you want without being censored, then it’s okay to talk with anyone.
And so, for this reason, we were meeting people who not exactly in line 100% with our ideals, but who can help us, let’s say to bring closer the prison reform in Russia. When we went to the Senate of the United States, we definitely were not in love with everyone. But we would always prepare ourselves, we would meet local activists first, like let’s say if we’re performing in Australia, we would talk with local migrant rights activists, and local feminists, to hear from them, what are important issues that are not being brought up in your local mainstream media? Do you want to call specific members of the government to action? And we would always get a little bit of context of what’s happening, and then we bring it to the scene, to the crime scene.
So when we came to the Senate, we talked not only about Russian prisoners, not only about Russian political prisoners, but we spoke also about Occupy Wall Street prisoner Cecily McMillan, who was in Rikers Island at the time. And the next day after, we gave this big press conference, with the senators who were not ready to hear about American political prisoners. We went to Rikers Island to visit her, and to listen to her story.
So I think as long as you think, and analyse the situation, it’s okay not to stay in your niche. Cos that’s a big conversation inside punk media, as you probably know. If you can meet certain people, if you can collaborate with certain media. Like, can a punk go on CNN? I think yes. As long as we can say whatever we want.
Amanda
Especially in those years after getting out and going nuts and touring around, and talking, touring, travelling, did you meet anyone who you felt really slowed down, and saw you? That didn’t necessarily need anything from you, someone who felt like a real ally? Maybe even stayed in your life, like this is a person who understands me? Whether it was a celebrity or not, another musician, a journalist. Did you find any soulmates?
Nadya
Of course. I think if you don’t find soulmates, what’s the reason to be alive?
Amanda
I agree. That doesn’t mean that it happens easily, especially if you’re going in a really fast pace, and it’s like, go to place, and go to an interview, and get on a train, and get on a plane, it can be really hard, actually, to slow down to the speed to create the conditions for that. And this is what a lot of touring musicians go through, it all happens so fucking fast that you’re barely living, cos you’re just so busy outputting.
Nadya
It’s funny but not. I don’t know how to describe it in English. Okay. It’s much easier to find soulmates when you are in prison than when you are out on tour. Because in prison, you find soulmates in people who you would not consider as those in real life, right? Cos you’re just constrained in four walls with this person who is an ex-investigator, ex-cop basically. She’s the only one person who’s going to see you in the next year, probably. And we made friends, we became friends with an ex-investigator, who used to be on another side, and now she became a friend.
But yeah, that’s difficult on tour, because you don’t have enough time, and also you just have limited energy. And I’m an introvert, so that’s even more difficult for me to connect with a lot of people at the same time.
But just today, me and my daughter, we hanged with Beau Willimon, who is the creator of House of Cards, and other amazing shows. We connected with him when we made a speech at a PEN Gala in New York. We were supposed to deliver a speech about the importance of books for prisoners, and we encouraged people if they can to send books to prisoners, because a book is one thing when you’re free, but in prison it becomes your whole world. If you don’t have access to good books, it means you don’t have access to anything. So we started to talk with Beau, and in 20 minutes he was like oh, do you wanna take part in House of Cards? We were like, that sounds… I mean, we’re curious. And we did it. So it’s been a lot of years since then, we met in 2014, and he is an example of a person who went through a lot of things in life with us, and he would always be really attentive, and thoughtful, and when things like the poisoning of my ex-husband, the father of my kid, Pyotr Verzilov, would happen, he would always offer his help.
And even if you are a touring musician, if you’re on a constant run, and your schedule doesn’t give you a lot of opportunities to connect with people, it’s still possible.
Amanda
Yeah. When did you realise you were an introvert? It surprised me when you said that.
Nadya
When I was a little kid, when I first read this classification, then I realised. Well, I think it’s really, as any classification, obviously it cannot be taken as an objective reality.
Amanda
It’s non-binary. I believe in the non-binariness of introversion.
Nadya
It’s a spectrum.
Amanda
We’re all somewhere on the spectrum, exactly. But do you feel that you need more time alone, and to process, than your average person?
Nadya
Well, introverts are average people too, right? Even according to binary classification, there are half of us. But when I was a kid, I didn’t go to parties or meetings, I’d have a really limited amount of friends, and I would not see them too often as well. But I think finally, I realised that I’m an introvert for sure at university, when I realised that I cannot go to lectures every single day, I need at least 3 days a week to just spend time alone, by myself, with books, with cinema.
Amanda
So if that’s the case, how do you survive and take care of yourself on the road? Because the road is constant people, constant talking, constant togetherness, and even if you like the content of the connection, it can be so exhausting. How did you deal with that, and how did you take care of yourself?
Nadya
Well, I think I will give you a universal answer, like if you’re touring people with whom you feel at home, if you’re comfortable with them, and if you’re comfortable and close with them enough to tell them, I need to be alone right now, shut up, and they can tell you shut up, then you feel much more comfortable, when you don’t have to put a face, constantly. And then just control the amount of communication. Because you don’t have to speak with every single journalist who wants to speak with you. At some point of my career I thought I have to, because there is something I need to tell them, for example about conditions in Russian prison, or about the state of democracy in Russia. And if someone asks me, it means I have to necessarily speak with them. And I would bring myself to the point of exhaustion, and at some point I realised it will not help anyone if I’ll kill myself, emotionally, trying to do that. So I would rather focus on several important things that I’ll decide for myself, that are important for me, and important conversations, so I’ll limit my interactions to a few a day. And I think with age, and just getting more easy on myself. Sometimes when I feel like I wanna tell everyone that I need alone time, I should not feel guilty about it.
Amanda
No, oh my god.
Nadya
What about you?
Amanda
I’ve been going through waves since having a child, because I went on tour last year, and I did a 4 hour show, not every night, but enough nights of the week that I was often exhausted. And similar to you, I think I started to try to become aware of the script in my head that was about what I should be doing, and how tired I should or shouldn’t be, and I started to just listen, and be like, actually, I know I shouldn’t really be tired right now, but I’m really fucking tired, and I just have to lie down, even though it doesn’t make any sense. And right now, I just need to ask for a day away from my child, even though I’ve been away from him, and I know I should wanna spend time with him, that’s not what’s happening. I’m too exhausted to be present for him, and it’s probably better that I just go away, and rest, so that when I reunite with him, I’m actually there.
And I just started being more realistic about stuff that I had never really wanted to be realistic about, like sleep, and how much I was drinking, and what I was putting into my body, like all the really un-fun, grown up shit, that you just don’t really wanna believe is true. You really do wanna believe that you can get by on 5 or 6 hours sleep, and it’s just not true. And you really do wanna believe that if you’ve worked your ass off, you deserve to drink a bottle of wine, and catch up with your friends, but actually, it’s just not great for the next day’s work. And all of this stuff that I think I had been avoiding for a long time, about taking care of myself, and what it actually looks like, and what it actually means, instead of the old script, and the list in my head of what reward is, and what time spent with what people is good, and what is bad, and I just ripped up the script and started again, I think, especially after having a kid. I was like oh, all these old ideas about myself and time are lies.
And I also had to accept becoming a person that I sort of feared being, cos I was really ambivalent about having a child. And I talked about this a lot on my tour, and I’ve had three abortions, two by choice. And I really didn’t wanna turn into the person who had a kid and became boring and went ot bed at fucking 8 o’clock at night, cos I would see that happening to people, and I was like, you fail! How can you be interesting if you’re having a child and going to bed at 8 o’clock at night! And now, I am no longer interested in arguing with that 25 year old version of myself who had ideas about what anything meant. She doesn’t matter any more. Her opinions don’t matter any more. Only my opinion, right now, matters. And what I need to do to take care of myself today is all that counts, and being able to listen to that.
And especially the pandemic… if I was already on my way there, it turned it up to 11. Cos I was watching myself follow a bunch of old scripts about what was good and what was bad, and what was time well spent, and what wasn’t, and what phone calls I had to answer, and I just was like, nope. This isn’t fucking working, so let’s start again. I think a lot of people have been going through that, probably. Especially people with kids.
Nadya
What you told me reminds me of things we talked about before, about punk rules.
Music Break – The Ride
Amanda
Americans, I think, and I can speak for myself here, have had a real kind of superior idea about our government being good and functional, and we look with pity at these poor other countries and their rigged elections. And now it feels like there’s a real reckoning in America about how things are run, and who’s really in charge. And you have a very particularly interesting window on that, given what you’ve been thinking about, and singing about, and writing about for the last 5, 10 plus years. What do you think about what is happening right now in America? A country that you spend time in, it’s not like it’s a foreign concept to you. What’s your take on this current fucking disaster?
Nadya
We are going through a crisis of mainstream political institutions, all which are represented by people like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and people are trying to say fuck you to this system worldwide, not only in the United States, but in Europe as well. So to serve the people’s wish to say fuck you to the system, here come the right wing populists, who are showing up all around the world. In Europe you can see Viktor Orban in Hungary, you can even see it happening in England, in France, in Germany, and in United States.
A lot of people feel not heard by mainstream politicians, they feel that their needs are not being met by a neoliberal economy, and people like Donald Trump appear all of a sudden, and they offer easy solutions, because that’s what authoritarian, or pro-authoritarian, politicians are doing. They’re pointing at easy targets to hate, and to blame for all the problems that people are experiencing. And that’s easy. That’s just part of being human. We’re looking for easy solutions, because if you look for difficult solutions all the time, our life would turn into hell. So we cannot blame people for wanting to vote for Donald Trump.
But I think what we wanna do, is to offer a viable solution to those people who feel left out by the current economic system. And I feel like people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, they’re on the way of serving justice to those people who feel left out by the current system. And it’s just a matter of time when politicians, left-wing progressive politicians, will be able to connect with those people who vote today for politicians like Donald Trump.
In the meanwhile, I really hope that all those people who believe that it’s not important to vote, they will show up, and they vote against Donald Trump on this elections. I’m here with Noam Chomsky, who I dearly love and respect, and I really love his formula. He’s not naming for who you should vote, he’s saying you have to vote against Donald Trump, because it’s a matter of survival. It’s a matter of survival of the whole planet, because Donald Trump is one of the most dangerous politicians in human history. He is a climate change denialist, and he is willing to sacrifice all our planet, not just United States, but all our planet, for the sake of profit.
Amanda
And especially because my patrons fund this podcast, and will be listening to you, I find it shocking that you’ve got YouTube videos with millions and millions and millions of views, and a huge voice, and to use a really disgusting term, but to throw it out there ironically, brand recognition. And to only see a couple hundred people supporting your Patreon makes me really angry. I wanna see thousands and thousands of people supporting your Patreon, especially because your voice, and your lack of genre, and the fact that you’re multimedia, makes you the perfect artist and creator and type for a platform like Patreon, where people are like, we don’t know what you’re gonna do, you might interview, you might write, you might podcast, you might make pop music, you might make a dubstep track, you might just do a piece of spoken word, but it all is fucking valid, and it all counts.
Do you see a future in that? And when you look at your Patreon, first of all how do you feel about it? How do you feel about using it? And also, if you had your way, would you wave your magic wand and be totally patron-funded, so you didn’t have to make money in any other way? Which is sort of like my fantasy direction, and especially now that touring is not just not profitable, but not possible, and we have kids to feed, and rent to pay.
I’ve started thinking of Patreon as actually possibly one of the most effective feminist tools of the 21st century, because women, especially parents, will not need to answer to the commercial system, and can just go direct with their art, their information, their message, whatever it is. And you’ve been on the platform for a little while now, what have you taken away from it? What have you learned, and what do you want?
Nadya
You are one of the inspirations why I started Patreon, because as many artists, I was one of those who didn’t want to ask. I was thinking, especially if in a certain way, I’m a part of the entertainment industry business, I was thinking, if I’m taking money for my shows, it means that I cannot really ask, cos it’s not fair. But then, I realised that I will never be good for the market enough. Because I always suffer from my interactions with the market, because since I have no genre first, and second, since my job is to make statements that subvert as many status quos as possible, it’s not realistic to find good funding through any traditional system. Let’s say if I go to any of the studios, including non-traditional ones, like Netflix, or Apple, they would not fuck with me, cos they have a Russian market, and they don’t wanna lose the Russian market.
Amanda
They wouldn’t fuck with you, meaning they wouldn’t work with you?
Nadya
Work with me, yes.
Amanda
Fucking with and working with, and within work and all of that. Right. They wouldn’t touch you.
Nadya
So I was just told by a woman, an American director, who is trying to make a movie about Pussy Riot, a biopic, the story. She went to all the studios, she’s really well connected, and she had an amazing cast, the best Hollywood actresses alive nowadays, the coolest, they wanted to play us. And with all of that in her pocket, she could not secure any funding, because all of those big companies, they have shares in Russia, there’s the Russian mafia, they are scared of it. Also, they are scared of being poisoned in their city for doing this.
So this is just one example. The same thing when I was trying to work with Warner Brothers, I was trying to make them fund my music. Len Blavatnik, who is one of the investors, and he is on the board of Warner Brothers, he said that it’s going to happen over his dead body, because he has his financial interests in Russia. He is invested in oil and gas companies there.
So being in Pussy Riot and creating political art means following really uneasy roads, where you meet obstacles when you ask for funding. So one of my Russian friends, who is helping us to raise money for our media outlet that I mentioned earlier, MediaZona, he convinced me that it’s okay to ask people who support Pussy Riot for money, to fund our music videos, to fund our music production, and activist campaigns, the media outlet that we create.
It was not an easy decision to make, but I made it, and I’m really, incredibly thankful to those 200 plus patrons who joined my Patreon, Pussy Riot’s Patreon right now, because it’s honestly the first time when I know that I’m going to get some sum of money in the next month. Because it’s never been a thing in my life, because after the tour, you can get some money, but then you just waste them right away on music videos, and music production.
Amanda
Right. I’ve been doing that for 15 years.
Nadya
And then you don’t have anything, you just have to eat oatmeal and rice, and beans, and everyone…
Amanda
So does it feel different to know that you have that safety net of people and money, no matter what happens?
Nadya
Yeah, for sure. I actually feel much less depressed, I have less anxiety, and though it’s not money that can actually fund my art today, but it’s still a sum that will not go anywhere, because it’s provided by small donors. Some people may decide they don’t wanna support Pussy Riot any more, but all of them will not go anywhere. And that’s insanely helpful for my mental health.
Amanda
I have found the same thing. And I’ve been on Patreon for 5 years now, and I draw the vast majority of my income from it, and I have a small staff, and I pay them out of that income, and that income being reliable means that I can have a staff, and not have to tour, or not have to put out a record. But there’s something bigger than that, which is just knowing that these people are there, and believe in me, is so different from a label signing me, or Netflix signing me, or someone thinking that I’ll be able to help them make a profit. It’s so much more comforting to go like, oh, you’re not in this for the money, you’re in this cos you actually want me to do things, and they’re like yeah, yeah, yeah! We just actually want you to do things! And I’m like, really?!
And it’s hard to explain to other artists, but it does do something to your feeling of value as an artist, that is very different from even having the top brass of the top corporations bonk you on the head with the magic wand, and say you’re the one. Because their motivation is so much shittier than even 200 people saying no, we just wanna hear what you have to say, we don’t even wanna buy anything, we just wanna support you in whatever your vision is. And that’s priceless.
Nadya
Priceless.
Amanda
The feeling it gives you is fucking priceless. And I hope that every single person who’s listening to this who’s one of my patrons goes and gives you money. Because I know that I have been supporting your Patreon, and it makes me feel really good to do it. It just makes me happy that my teeny pittance of contribution is going to you, to help you and your life, and your kid, and whatever is gonna come out the other side. It makes me happy to do that.
Nadya
Thank you so much! And thank you for inspiration, in all areas of life. And I know it…
Amanda
And last but not least, we have a book club going on my Patreon podcast group, and we’re gonna read Read and Riot, and if you wanna come and talk to us as a group in a few months or whatever, it would be amazing. I’d love to watch you answer questions from different people around the world, and not just me.
Nadya
I’m in!
Amanda
So if you’re game to do that, let’s do it.
Nadya
I’m excited. I’m going to work soon on another book, so yeah. I don’t know what I’m saying, but it’s gonna be… Well, it’s the first time I’m actually saying it out loud, it’s gonna be a book about possible alternative futures. I’m going to imagine different utopias. Like feminist utopia, ecological utopia, to have something to move forward to.
Amanda
Yes!
Nadya
And I’m going to interview a bunch of experts, and scientists, and artists too, whose job is to think about possible futures.
Amanda
Oh my god, come and talk to me about arts funding, because everyone is getting it wrong.
Nadya
Yeah. I think so.
Amanda
Really, when I think about a future for artists, I would just love to see no corporate dollars, and no commercial shackles, and no golden handcuffs of ad-based art, and all of the things that are killing people creatively right now. I see it. I see it! It’s out there!
Nadya
It’s out there 100%, and I swear to you… got this. I feel so much freer since I’m on Patreon, and I don’t have to talk, I don’t have to take seriously charts, Spotify, labels…
Amanda
Algorithms!
Nadya
I just don’t think about it. Yeah. It’s really suddenly liberating.
Amanda
Congratulations.
This has been The Art of Asking Everything podcast, I am Amanda Palmer. Thank you so much to my guest, Nadya from Pussy Riot, for having this conversation with me, and please, please, go support her on Patreon, she is there at patreon.com/pussyriot. She’s got about 250 supporters, if we could get her a couple hundred more, I know it would make a huge difference to her life, and her work, and her ability to make unfettered art without the system.
There’s lots of other links to her music and books and schedule in the show notes, on my Patreon. And for all music that you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net/podcast and click on this episode.
This podcast was produced by FannieCo, lots and lots of thanks are due to my incredible team, especially Hayley Rosenblum. She is the ghost in the machine of my Patreon, and she makes sure that so many things get done, words, pictures, the live chats, and all the general internet love, she is one of my biggest helpers, and I could not do this without her.
My assistant Michael McComiskey makes sure all of the schedules and the trains run on time, and I am not able to do this without him either, so thank you, Michael.
Our merch queen, Alex Knight, is also helping us transcribe this podcast, and lift quotes, and work one everything in the background, so thank you Alex for that, for making these conversations accessible to everyone.
And of course, as always, my manager Jordan Verzar helps us all bring it all together, thank you Jordan.
And last but not least, this whole podcast would not be possible without all of my patrons. At current count, we’ve got somewhere between 14 and 15,000 of them, and these people make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, we are just the media, making our things, and doing what we do. This is a homegrown product, without any help from above, so special thanks are due to my high level patrons who give a lot of money: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove. Thank you so much you guys, for helping us make this.
Everyone else, please go to my Patreon, become a supporting member. This will also give you access to the follow up live chat that I have every week with my podcast guest, that usually comes out a few days after the podcast, and we talk deeper about the issues, we ask and answer questions from the community, they’re really, really, really good, so please join us for that.
You can find me anywhere on social media @amandapalmer and the Patreon is also full of extra things like pictures about the podcast, please go there and find out more about me, and Nadya, and all of this good stuff.
Thank you everyone for tuning in. Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on pussy rioting, and keep on asking everything.