After several weeks spent in forced psychiatric detention, Pyotr Pavlensky is back in pre-trial detention. The performance artist faces charges of vandalism after setting the door to the FSB’s Moscow headquarters alight in November 2015. A public challenge to Russia’s security services, this action, which Pavlensky titled “Threat”, soon went viral, and raised questions about the regulation of society and the limits of political art — what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
Over the past two months, I’ve exchanged several letters with Pavlensky — on life in prison and political art.
Forced quarantine
“Threat” is by no means Pavlensky’s first piece of performance art. In previous stunts, Pavlensky sewed his mouth shut in support of Pussy Riot, nailed his scrotum to the cobbles of Red Square to protest against public political apathy and cut off an earlobe in response to the state’s use of forced psychiatric treatment against dissidents.
