few clarifications by Teivo Teivainen related to the Pussy Riot performance in Helsinki, in front of the Uspenski cathedral on Friday August 3.

August 6, Day of Hiroshima, 2012 in Helsinki.

1. A World Political City Walk, organiz
ed by me for the URB festival of Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, took place on August 3. The idea was to walk around the city asking sometimes provocative questions about the transnational dimension of local issues and places. The Walk included various stops such as the performance of the Infamous Superstars of the Financial Markets in front of the Ministry of Finance. Some of the basic ideas of the walk, at the web site of Kiasma, can be found here:
http://www.kiasma.fi/calendar/kiasmatheatr...tical-city-walk

2. One of the stops during the walk was in front of the Uspenski Cathedral, an orthodox place of worship in Helsinki. A performance related to the Pussy Riot situation took place in front of the cathedral. Thereafter this performance has received surprisingly heated attention in various media, especially but not only in Russia. As some of this attention has been based on misleading information, I decided to draft these lines of clarification.

3. The performance included two anonymous persons dressed in clothes that resembled Pussy Riot gear. It was not a coincidence that we three were there simultaneously. The other two persons do not want their identity to be disclosed.

4. I told the participants of the walk before approaching the cathedral that the Orthodox Church of Finland is under Constantinople, not Moscow. This was also to avoid overly simplistic political interpretations of the performance.

5. Uspenski Cathedral was picked as one of the many stops in the World Political City Walk for various reasons. One was that the spokesperson of the Orthodox Church of Finland had commented the same morning the Pussy Riot question in the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. He had compared the Pussy Riot performance in Russia to an imaginary action by Finnish sexual minorities at the grave of (the national hero) Mannerheim on an independence day. I found these comments interesting and reflected on them during the performance.

6. As is publicly known, Uspenski Cathedral closes at 4pm. The walk started at 5pm and we arrived near the cathedral some time before 6pm. Comments made in Russian media about the Church deliberately closing its doors for our performance are therefore incorrect. Perhaps in Russia, where churches can often be open most of the time, the fact that it was closed when we were there gave room to misleading speculations.

7. I personally believe that the judicial and other actions against the Pussy Riot performers in Russia include various kinds of threats to human rights and freedom of expression. One of my motivations for including this performance in the World Political City Walk is due to this belief. As with many other kinds of political art, however, the full spectrum of the meanings of the performance at the Uspenski Cathedral should not be simplistically reduced to any single message.

8. Free Pussy Riot.