Dissensus and ‘shimmering’

“F*** tha police!” à la Russe: Rancière and the Metamodernist Turn in Contemporary Russian Music

“…While acknowledging the indispensable political dimension of art, we follow up and expand on the arguments of those authors who claim that it should not be reduced to such straightforward oppositions as “freedom vs. oppression” or “West vs. East,” to “fighting against the regime in the same discursive register as the regime” (Borenstein 2021, 42; see also Leiderman 2017). Current scholarship tends to bring forward artworks engaging in literal ideological critique or performative confrontation.…”

“…Current scholarship tends to bring forward artworks engaging in literal ideological critique or performative confrontation. Hence the focus on actionism of, for example, the Voina group, Piotr Pavlensky, and the Monstratsiya movement (Jonson 2015;Leiderman 2017;Platt 2017), oppositional rappers such as Noize MC, Vasya Oblomov, Oxxxymiron, and Husky (Ewell 2017;Denisova and Herasimenka 2019;Siegień 2019), or on performing poetry of, among others, Kirill Medvedev and Roman Osminkin (Bozovic 2017). The radical feminist punk group Pussy Riot serves as the model of artistic political engagement that continues the dissident traditions of Soviet nonconformism and post-Soviet actionism (Steinholt 2013;Borenstein 2021).…”

“…The radical feminist punk group Pussy Riot serves as the model of artistic political engagement that continues the dissident traditions of Soviet nonconformism and post-Soviet actionism (Steinholt 2013; Borenstein 2021). As a work of art, the song that made the group world-famous, the “Punk Prayer” performed in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow in February 2012, was indeed rather subtle: its message cannot be reduced to the refrain asking Virgin Mary to “chase Putin away” (Leiderman 2017, 174–176). Their other texts might be more direct, as they include calls to “Do a Tahrir on the Red Square” (“Raze the Pavement,” 2011) – a reference to the Arab Spring – and vivid parallels between Stalin’s USSR and Putin’s Russia (“1937,” 2019).…”

“…In his analysis of Moscow conceptualism, Daniil Leiderman connects dissensus with “shimmering” ( mertsatel’nost’ or mertsanie ) – a concept introduced in the 1970s by the poet and artist Dmitry Prigov. Leiderman defines shimmering as “a broader disciplined tergiversation of alternating investment and detachment, designed to undermine the binary conflicts around art” between official and alternative discourses (Leiderman 2017, 165). He claims that this strategy was successfully deployed by a number of Russian artists at the turn of the 2010s, including Pussy Riot.…”