Punitive psychiatry in European style
As it turned out, not only in “totalitarian-soviet” Russia do they not understand the creative and civic torment of the artist Pavlensky, but also in the citadel of the arts and freethinking, tolerant European France.
As the BBC news service reported on June 15, a French court extended the artist's arrest pending trial on the basis of three psychiatric and one psychological examinations, which concluded that Pavlensky suffers from “delusional obsessions,” “borderline personality disorder” with narcissistic bases and from “a desire to commit crimes.” law and the restrictions provided for by it.” Moreover, this whole “bouquet,” according to experts, is crowned with a “high risk of relapse.”
The court also recognized that Pavlensky was uncontrollable, could escape, and therefore should be kept in prison. And not just, but in solitary confinement, with a ban on walking with other prisoners.
Other advantages of Pavlensky became aggravating circumstances for the court: “he is famous, he is Russian, he does not know French,” he is engaged in squatting (unauthorized settlement) with his wife, he has no job, income, savings or social insurance. A family of homeless people, to put it simply.
The juiciest thing in this list is “Russian, without knowledge of the language.” If a French court tried to detain some illegal migrant - a former goat herder from Algeria - with such a wording, the shops, benches and cars of law-abiding French inhabitants would instantly burst into flames.
Currently, Pavlensky faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 150 thousand euros for setting fire to the front door of the Bank of France on Place de la Bastille.
This time, the artist’s passion for radical performances failed him. But how fun it all started! The artist Pavlensky chose his body and the objects surrounding it as tools for socio-political manifestos: he sewed his mouth shut in support of Pussy Riot; cut off his earlobe with a knife in protest against “the use of punitive psychiatry in politics,” while sitting on the fence of the Institute. Serbian; on Police Day, he nailed his own scrotum to the paving stones of Red Square, protesting against “the apathy and political indifference of Russian society”; wrapped in a coil of barbed wire near the building of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly “against the unfair policy of the Russian authorities.”
It is interesting that the sewn-up mouth was usually used by seasoned criminals from the so-called “denial” - a demonstrative act of disobedience to “cop laws.” In general, the man had an interesting and eventful life in Russia.
Russian society, in general, showed a cool academic interest in Pavlensky’s performances, mockingly and wondering what part of his own body the artist would abuse next time.
Looking at Petya’s jokes, I remembered the classic “I’ll sit down and won’t get up - I demand freedom for Luis Corvalan!”
But it turned out that the luminary’s scrotum nailed to the paving stones became the apophygee of his transformations - the artist Petya moved from self-mutilation to demonstrative damage to state property. It suddenly seemed to him that this was how he would attract public attention than by cutting off everything unnecessary from himself.
On an early November morning in 2015, a stupid figure drove up to Lubyanka Square with a can of gasoline and set fire to the entrance to the main FSB building. While the police squad was on its way to the scene of the incident, the “spalahui” managed to combine a performance with an installation, photographing himself against the backdrop of the fire. As the arsonist’s lifelong friend later stated, the action was called “Threat.” Information support for the “Threat” was provided by two employees of the opposition TV channel “DO///DY”, who love all the wretched and holy fools who like to urinate against the wind.
According to the famous blogger Varlamov, the police were afraid to approach the idiot with a canister standing by the fire wall: “he nailed his own balls to the paving stones - who knows what’s in his head!”
The fiery performance raised the question of the sanity of the actionist Pavlensky. Forensic Psychiatric Commission at the Institute named after. Serbsky gave an unequivocal conclusion: the patient is sane.
If we read between the lines, the diagnosis given to Pavlensky by a respected expert institution should be interpreted as follows: “No mental illness was detected. Just a fool."
The Tagansky District Court of Moscow was tormented for a long time over the imposition of a punishment for a restless fool who considers himself an artist. They didn’t take him for a fool, his degenerate behavior also didn’t lead to terrorism, although the defendant himself literally demanded to be punished under the article “terrorism” - otherwise, they say, I won’t accept your judgment. Actually, from the trial of the arson of the FSB entrance at Lubyanka, Pavlensky decided to organize another performance: “Judge, spread rot on me, Putin’s satraps!”
The court, however, did not follow the art provocateur’s lead and ordered Petya to be arrested for a month for hooliganism and ordered to pay a fine of half a million rubles with compensation for damages of 55 thousand rubles.
Disappointed and scandalized by such a prosaic turn of the case, Pavlensky declared that he would not pay anything, because he did not recognize the jurisdiction of the judiciary in “unfree Russia.”
In the end, public misunderstanding of the artist’s civic position led Pavlensky, along with his life partner, to the decision to leave cold Russia and embrace European freedoms. This is where the subtle artistic nature could truly unfold!
Arriving in France and receiving political asylum, Pavlensky immediately established that there was no historical justice in this country either. Armed with the idea of local leftists, Petya repeated the performance with the entrance of the FSB at the Bank of France. According to him, the Bank of France financed the Versailles “death squads” that shot the rebels from the Paris Commune in 1871.
“Thus, I marked the beginning of a worldwide fire of revolutions, in the fire of which Russia will begin its revival,” the unfinished Trotskyist actionist explained his action.
In France, where laws are respected and the inviolability of property is respected, Pavlensky’s humor was not understood, which is why Petya, along with his wife Oksana Shalygina, who participated in the action, ended up in a prison bunk with the poetic name of Fleury-Mérogis. Shalygina was soon released to continue living homeless, despite her lack of knowledge of French.
Interestingly, upon learning of the new performance and the arrest of the restless Petrusha, the French media burst into indignant cackling: “The Russian artist does not understand the difference between doors: it is one thing to set fire to the door of the totalitarian FSB, and quite another to let the old and very respected Bank of France rooster.”
By the way, for setting the door of the FSB building on fire, Pavlensky received the Vaclav Havel Award from the human rights organization Humans Rights Foundation.
For setting fire to the door of the Bank of France, instead of a bonus, he faces imprisonment for an indefinite period, the alternative to which is treatment in a psychiatric hospital.
Having survived the judicial experience in France, Pavlensky and Shalygina are very disappointed and claim that “the psychiatric system of France is degrading faster than the Russian one,” and the verdict itself for such trifles as setting fire to a bank door is explained by the authorities’ lack of understanding of political art, “the desire to trivialize it, to simply give it away for uncontrolled hooliganism."
You have to understand, you idiots, when an artist craps at the behest of his body, and when he craps out of a sense of beauty in political art!
One can only imagine what kind of uproar would have arisen in the world press if a Russian court had declared Pavlensky an idiot dangerous to society and sent him to serve an indefinite sentence with the alternative of swallowing haloperidol, banging his head against foam walls in a shirt with an elegant knot on the back, alternating psychiatric trips with healing electroconvulsive therapy.
Witnesses who have experienced the delights of the European prison and psychiatric system claim that they would not wish the enemy to end up in this comfortable hell, where rebels and shareholders are systematically turned into quiet and law-abiding vegetables. Let us rejoice for Pyotr Pavlensky - he is finally in good hands!
English version :: Read in English: Punitive Psychiatry, European Style