Worldmaking and Worldbreaking: Pussy Riot's ‘Punk Prayer’

Abstract

This article critiques Nelson Goodman's seminal account of worldmaking on the basis that it focuses on the abstract at the expense of the concrete and therefore over-emphasises rightness and coherence in the creation of world versions. Suggesting that his account ought not to be abandoned altogether, Goodman's five worldmaking processes are used in conjunction with Judith Butler's account of gesture as event. The article suggests that worldmaking inevitably involves worldbreaking not simply in the sense of transforming already existing world versions but in terms of the co-existence of world versions within a single location. Pussy Riot's action ‘Mother of God, Chase Putin Away’ in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour forms the case in point, drawing out the dynamic between worldmaking and worldbreaking and showing how it is inevitably and powerfully bound up with performance and context.

Keywords:

• Worldmaking
• Worldbreaking
• Pussy Riot
• Nelson Goodman
• Judith Butler
• Gesture
• Event
• Speech-Act

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

[1] Limiting worldmaking to the human person acknowledges the imaginative character of the response to the environment that distinguishes human action from other forms of animal action. See for example, Heidegger (1995 [1929–1930], part two, chapter three).

[2] The main focus of attention has generally fallen on the visual realm and the realm of storytelling in various forms, whether through fiction or through autobiography (see e.g. Nünning, Nünning, & Neumann, 2010). While sound studies have increasingly paid attention to the ways in which we are situated in the world (see e.g. Sterne, 2012), music has been situated for the most part only implicitly in relation to worldmaking (see e.g. Finnegan, 2002; Ó Laoire, 2007). Exceptions are Taylor (2012) and Stone-Davis (2015b).

[3] This results from Goodman's nominalism. However, he is clear that it is not necessary to adopt this position in order to take the notion or worldmaking seriously. That is, while Goodman's nominalism entails a ban on all talk of classes of things (‘The nominalistic prohibition is against the profligate propagation of entities out of any chosen base of individuals, but leaves the choice of that basis quite free’ [Goodman, 1978, pp. 94–95]), and denies the existence of worlds (‘While I stress the multiplicity of right world-versions, I by no means insist that there are many worlds—or indeed any’ [1978, p. 96]), he purposefully leaves open the ontological status of the worlds that are created (1978, p. 95).

[4] Goodman explains that wholes are divided into parts and complexes are analysed into component features whilst features are connected and combined and wholes are composed (1978, p. 7).

[5] Goodman notes: ‘metaphorical transfer—for example, where taste predicates are applied to sounds—may effect a double reorganisation, both re-sorting the new realm of application and relating to the old one’ (1978, p. 8).

[6] In the case of music, ‘the patterns perceived under a twelve-tone scale are quite different from those perceived under the rational eight-tone scale, and rhythms depend upon the marking off into measures’ (1978, p. 13).

[7] ‘Artists often make skilful use of this: a lithograph by Giacometti fully presents a walking man by sketches of nothing but the head, hands, and feet in just the right postures and positions against an expanse of blank paper’ (1978, p. 14).

[8]

We start, on any occasion, with some old version or world that we have on hand and that we are stuck with until we have the determination and skill to remake it into a new one. Some of the felt stubbornness of fact is the grip of habit: our firm foundation is indeed stolid. Worldmaking begins with one version and ends with another. (1978, pp. 96–97)

[9] It is music so conceived, for Goodman, which is alone capable of satisfying the conditions that make a symbol system eligible to be called notation.

[10]

Since complete compliance with the score is the only requirement for a genuine instance of a work, the most miserable performance without actual mistakes does count as such an instance, while the most brilliant performance with a single wrong note does not. (1976, p. 186)

[11]

If we allow the least deviation, all assurance of work-preservation and score-preservation is lost; for by a series of one-note errors of omission, addition, and modification, we can go all the way from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to Three Blind Mice. (1976, pp. 186–187)

This recognises the importance of the performative but stringently regulates it to conformity to the score.

[12] Goodman illustrates the logic with the example of a lady who, having studied a sample book, makes a selection and orders from the shop enough material to cover her chair and sofa, insisting that ‘it be exactly like the sample’. When the bundle arrives, the lady opens it and is upset ‘when several hundred 2′ × 3′ pieces with zigzag edges exactly like the sample’ flutter to the floor. The lady calls the shop complaining and is met with the following reply: ‘you said the material must be exactly like the sample. When it arrived from the factory yesterday, I kept my assistants here half the night cutting it up to match the sample’ (1978, p. 63).

[13]

A red swatch, for instance, exemplifies ‘rouge’ and not ‘red’ to a Frenchman. Goodman suggests as an alternative that we construe ‘exemplifies redness’ as elliptical for ‘exemplifies some label coextensive with ‘red’. (Cohnitz & Rossberg, 2006, p. 136)

[14]

Making a world means nothing more [ … ] than just producing a sample of it. Neither artist nor the critic can know this world, except through the one or more samples they have of it. Accordingly, it also follows that every work of art presents the task of exploring that world which it makes known by being a sample of it. (Kulenkampff, 1981, p. 257)

[15] It is the abstraction from the concrete and performative that also leads Goodman to have difficulty in accounting for the ways in which worldmaking processes are implemented within a given artwork to create a coherent whole. Addressing variation in music, Goodman can only state the kind of exemplificational relationship that would need to be set in place in order for musical variation to occur. From this conceptual point of view, Goodman is unable to determine ‘which among several passages is the theme in question’ (1988, p. 68), leaving this to musicians and musicologists, that is, to those who are concerned with performance and analysis.

[16] This neutrality is only ever suggested since spaces are always designed (as are the ways in which the ‘objects’ in them are displayed) and are frequented by those who have their own expectations arising from experiences of certain types of world versions (see Bal, 2002, pp. 133–173, for a discussion of framing within the exhibition space). Hence the strong reactions that some first performances of certain pieces have elicited, such as Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, which precipitated a riot at its premiere in Paris in 1913.

[17] The use of the term ‘action’ has a double benefit: it reflects the political motivation lying behind Pussy Riot's performances, and has the advantage of highlighting the fact that such performances constitute forms of speech act, thereby facilitating their exploration through gesture.

[18] For more on Voina's actions, see http://plucer.livejournal.com/266853.html.

[19] While there is evidence to suggest that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are no longer to be identified with the Pussy Riot collective (see Pussy Riot, 2014), in an article about the song ‘I Can't Breathe’ they do seem to be using the collective's name: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/18/russian-punk-band-pussy-riot-i-cant-breathe-song-eric-garner. The name ‘Pussy Riot’ also framed the pair's recent appearance at Glastonbury: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/26/pussy-riot-park-their-tank-on-putins-lawn-at-glastonbury.

[20] ‘Release the Cobblestones’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEiB1RYuYXw.

[21] Most of the performances making up the video took place along Stoleshnikov Lane, ‘a pedestrian street lined with designer boutiques’ (Gessen, 2014, p. 64).

[22] ‘Kropotkin Vodka’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZUhkWiiv7M.

[23] ‘Death to Prison, Freedom To Protests’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyZbJpYV0I&feature=plcp.

[24] ‘Putin Zassal’ (translations include ‘Putin has pissed himself’ and ‘Putin got scared’): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kVMADLm3js&feature=plcp.

[25] The Kropotkin of the song-title refers to the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) and vodka to ‘unbridled consumption’ (Gessen, 2014, p. 65).

[26] The group accidentally caused a fire during their performance:

They had this idea of creating visual effects with white flour, which they sprinkled on the floor, and balloons, which they let float up off the floor. But after they had unpacked their equipment and started singing, the flour on the floor caught fire from candles that the show organizers had placed along the walls. Fire spread instantly along the floor and up the balloon strings, singeing and burning garments. (Gessen, 2014, p. 65)

[27] The principle of seriality was still taken seriously by Yekaterina Samutsevich (Kat) and her faction of Pussy Riot. Responding to the video produced by Nadya and Maria following their release, which protested against the alliance of Putin with the oil industry:

Kat's group felt that it did not correspond to Pussy Riot's idea of serial performance: it consisted of several performances, but these, Kat's group believed, had been staged solely for the purpose of producing the video rather than as independent actions. It was a subtle distinction, and a difficult argument to make given the group's brief but varied history, but for Kat's Pussy Riot, it was serious. (Gessen, 2014, p. 198)

[28] Within the cathedral, the particular location selected for the performance is not to be underestimated. Pussy Riot performed from the ambo, ‘the cathedral's primary place for patriarchal proclamation and communication’ (Denysenko, 2013, p. 1083, see also pp. 1068–1069). This can be seen as a means of the group's re-appropriation of the cathedral's symbolic space. However, it is unclear whether the group was entirely clear what the space was before the performance:

There was a spot in the cathedral that looked like it had been created especially for Pussy Riot. They had no idea what it was called or what its purpose was, but it looked incongruously like a stage in the middle of the church [ … ] it seemed to inspire no particular piety; the cleaning lady marched up there with her equipment every day. (Gessen, 2014, pp. 90–91)

[29]

They recalled a cathedral near the contemporary arts centre they frequented. It was appropriately grand and at the same time appropriately quiet, almost obscure [ … ] They knew that it contained enough gilt and opulence that in a fast-paced clip, if they interspersed the footage, it would pass for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, just shot from a different angle. (Gessen, 2014, p. 92)

[30] Original footage: https://youtu.be/grEBLskpDWQ.

[31] Video of ‘Punk Prayer’: https://youtu.be/lPDkJbTQRCY.

[32] Translations of the ‘Punk Prayer’ lyrics can be found at: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/20/pussy-riot-punk-prayer-lyrics and http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/what-pussy-riots-punk-prayer-really-said/264562/.

[33] Having expressed reservations about the action in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Seraphima left the country before it took place (Gessen, 2014, p. 89).

[34] The ambiguity of this re-contextualisation—whether the actions are meant earnestly as part of the ‘Punk Prayer’ or as a form of mimicry—is compounded by the fact that although the gestures are tranquilly conducted by members of Pussy Riot, the actions are interrupted by security guards trying to forcibly remove them. For an account of the ‘Punk Prayer’ performance in terms of the ‘Holy Fool’ figure, see Woodyard (2014).

[35] Nadya says, ‘when you put on a mask, you leave your own time, you abandon the world in which any sincerity will be mocked’ (Tolokonnikova & Žižek, 2014, p. 49) and Braidotti comments, ‘in putting on the balaclava you don't hide yourself but rather express another political subjectivity, which allows you to unveil and debunk the working of power and despotism’ (2015, p. 248).

[36] The prosecutor was clearly right to note that the lyrics were added after the performance, but framed the explanation of this in terms of the world version he sought to protect.

[37] There are too many to mention in this regard. Examples include: https://vimeo.com/47483917; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYoV_YLhIA; https://vimeo.com/54394398; https://vimeo.com/47456066.

[38]

The defendants are being charged with committing an act of hooliganism, which is a rude disruption of the social order showing a clear disregard for society, committed for reasons of religious hatred and enmity, for reasons of hatred toward a particular social group, committed by a group of people as a result of a conspiracy. (Gessen, 2014, p. 125)

The documentary by Lerner and Pozdorovkin (2013) also shows footage of the strong opinions held against Pussy Riot by members of the Russian Orthodox faith.