In the chapters from Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot that we have read for class on Wednesday, Masha Gessen descriptively outlines the genesis of Pussy Riot, and their practices, group dynamic, and concerns leading up to the ultimate incarceration. I’m particularly curious (and confused) about two aspects of their formation and ongoing musical-protest practices. First, Gessen notes that “Pussy Riot had declared seriality as one of its core principles” (Gessen, 101) But what does seriality mean here? It seems Gessen and Pussy Riot imply this, for the group, means a rigorous commitment to the immediate, unchanged results of their performance protests. But if so, why not indeterminacy? If seriality implies creating a structured set of parameters by which the result is structured and left to stand, then what are the performative, activist, or other parameters they are working within to achieve their immediate result?

Second, why is punk the musical vehicle for their protest and politics? What does punk do for them? And why does their modality of political circulation need to be musical here? (Does it need to be?) Throughout both Words Will Break Cement: the Passion of Pussy Riot and Pussy Riot! A Punk Prayer for Freedom, no one seems to describe who Pussy riot are, or what they do, as musicians or music. Rather, they are performers; their first direct action was “a performance rather than performance art.” (Gessen, 101) Why this semantic shift away from the musical to the performative, while simultaneously asserting Pussy Riot as a punk band?