A performance artist has been detained in Moscow after
stripping naked and nailing his scrotum to the cobblestones of Red Square in a
protest.
Pyotr
Pavlensky, 29, reportedly sat for an hour and a half on the square on Sunday
afternoon, with a nail driven through his genitals into the ground.
The St
Petersburg performer had faced a custodial sentence of 15 days but was freed on
Monday.
Pavlensky said
his "Fixation" act was a metaphor for apathy in Russia.
Critics of
Russian President Vladimir Putin accuse him of presiding over a crackdown on
dissent since his re-election in March last year.
Timing his act
to coincide with Police Day, Pavlensky said in a statement: "When the
authorities turn the country into one big prison, openly robbing the populace
and channelling funds to increase and enrich the police and other security
agencies, society accepts arbitrariness and, having forgotten its advantage in
numbers, brings the triumph of the police state closer through its
inaction."
His graphic act
outside the Lenin Mausoleum was recorded on video which was put online before
being blocked by leading social media, the Russian news website grani.ru
reports. Clips continued to appear on Monday.
A judge who
examined his case on Monday ruled that the documents had been incorrectly
presented, Russian news website TV Rain reports. It was not immediately clear
if he would be re-arrested.
Pavlensky
previously attracted attention by sewing his lips together in July of last year
and demonstrating outside St Petersburg's Kazan Cathedral in support of the
imprisoned Pussy Riot protesters. In May of this year, he wrapped his naked
body in a "cocoon" of barbed wire outside the city's parliament.
Fellow figures
from the Russian arts world praised his Red Square act in comments on grani.ru,
with one calling it a "powerful gesture of absolute despair" and
another, "a manifesto of powerlessness".
Others asked
how security forces patrolling Red Square could have allowed Pavlensky to get
away with his performance so long. One blogger quipped on Twitter: "The
artist Pavlensky nails micro-bloggers to his testicles".
Source: BBC
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