Why This 30-Year-Old Russian Artist Is Protesting By Cutting Off His Right Earlobe
Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky, known for his shocking protest stunts, cut off part of his earlobe in a protest titled "Separation" at a Moscow psychiatric institution Sunday. EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains graphic images.
By Sadho Ram — 21 Oct 2014, 06:55 AM — Updated almost 10 years ago
Pyotr Pavlensky, a controversial Russian performance artist and political activist who once nailed his scrotum to the cobblestones of Moscow's Red Square, sliced off his earlobe in his latest protest against the forced psychiatric treatment of dissidents in Russia
Pyotr Pavlensky cut off his right earlobe with a large kitchen knife on Sunday in a performance aptly titled "Separation."
Image via mshcdn.comA native of St. Petersburg, Pyotr climbed naked on to the roof of Moscow's Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry on Sunday and cut off his right earlobe with a large kitchen knife. His performance was titled "Separation."
Staging his performance — entitled Separation — at the Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry, an institution which became notorious during Soviet times for declaring political dissidents as mentally ill, Pavlensky's performance was a commentary on the resurgence of corrupt psychiatric practices in contemporary Russia.
calvertjournal.comIn a statement from Pyotr published on the Facebook page of his wife, journalist Oksana Shalygina, the artist wrote: “The knife separates the body from the earlobe. The concrete wall of psychiatry separates the sane society of the insane patients."
calvertjournal.com“By again using psychiatry for political goals, the police give themselves the power to separate the sane from the insane,” he said. “Armed with psychiatric diagnoses, the bureaucrat in a white lab coat cuts off from society those pieces that prevent him from establishing a monolithic dictate of a single, mandatory norm for everyone.”
mashable.com
A composed but blood-covered Pyotr Pavlensky was apprehended by police and transported to Botkinskaya Hospital
Covered in blood, he was removed from the roof by police and taken to a Moscow hospital. Doctors thought he might also have contracted pneumonia, his lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, said on Monday.
theguardian.com
However, Dinze told the British newspaper later that Pavlensky did not have pneumonia or more serious complications from the amputated earlobe and was expected to be discharged soon.
mashable.com
The Serbsky centre is infamous for giving questionable diagnoses to many of the dissidents who were confined to psychiatric wards in the USSR, The Guardian reported
The Serbsky institution was notorious in Soviet times for declaring political dissidents as mentally ill in order to quash their actions. Human rights groups contend that the practice has resurfaced in Russia after Mikhail Kosenko, a Bolotnaya Square protester, was declared insane by the institution and sentenced to indefinite psychiatric care.
mashable.com
Nadiya Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot who was captured by pro-Russia separatists, is being tried for complicity in the deaths of two Russian war correspondents on charges that human rights groups have called politically motivated. She has been undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at the centre since last week.
theguardian.com
Pyotr, who has previously sewn his mouth shut and wrapped himself in barbed wire in protests, is known for his gruesome, self-mutilating public performances
Artist Pyotr Pavlensky lies on the ground, wrapped in barbed wire roll, during a protest
Image via re-aligned.netPavlensky, who has a long history of self-mutilating protests in Russia, gained international attention in November 2013 when he undressed and nailed his scrotum to the cobblestones of Red Square as “a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of modern Russian society”.
theguardian.com
In May 2013, Pavlensky wrapped himself naked inside a ring of barbed wire in front of the St. Petersburg legislative assembly. In July 2012, he sewed his mouth shut in front of Moscow’s Kazan Cathedral to protest the prosecution of the Russian punk rock group Pussy Riot.
mashable.com
Pavlensky underwent a psychiatric examination at the Moscow hospital where he is being held on Monday and was declared sane for the third time. “The psychiatric institution is the device of exception that society cannot eliminate until it gets rid of the faith in the new demons,” Pavlensky said in the statement his wife posted to Facebook on Sunday.
mashable.com
Artist Pyotr Pavlensky lies on the ground, wrapped in barbed wire roll, during a protest
Image via rt.com