A Russian performance artist who nailed his testicles to a Red Square cobblestone in protest against the Kremlin?s crackdown on political rights appeared in court today as police consider whether to charge him with hooliganism.
Eye-watering footage showed Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin?s Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, before police covered him with a blanket before prised him free.
Authorities are now probing the charge of hooliganism motivated by hatred ? the same indictment that saw punk band Pussy Riot jailed for staging a ?punk prayer? in Moscow?s main cathedral last year.
Private protest: Eye-watering footage showed Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin?s Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, before police covered him with a blanket before prised him free
It is a further twist to a saga that saw Pavlensky sew his lips together in protest over the two women?s incarceration in prison camps for two years.
If charged and then convicted, the maximum punishment for Saint Petersburg-based performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky could be five years in prison.
He was briefly hospitalised for a tetanus shot, visited a psychiatrist, and spent a night in a police station, but was unexpectedly released Monday from the district court after the judge found errors in police paperwork and ruled that officers had not proved any offence on his part.
In interviews, Pavlensky said he chose Red Square outside the Kremlin walls because it represents total police control, while his performance represented society?s indifference to this control.
?With my performances I show the relationship between society and the authorities,? he told Russian Radio Service radio station Thursday evening.
Since his performance he went back to Saint Petersburg.
He previously sewed his lips shut in protest of arrest of Pussy Riot in June 2012 and in May of this year he wrapped his naked body in barbed wire outside the Saint Petersburg parliament to protest the passage of increasingly repressive laws in Russia.
Source: DAILY MAIL
