Berlin bystanders caught a colorful eyeful on Wednesday at 5 p.m. when roughly 400 Pussy Riot supporters marched down Oderberger Strasse in the upscale neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg wearing rainbow-hued balaclavas and chanting, “Free Pussy Riot!” toward oncoming traffic.
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The cars stopped, of course.
Drivers smiled and watched the spectacle, which resembled a Technicolor flash mob. Children, with their families at a nearby cafe, roared with laughter. Elsewhere in the crowd, people took pictures with their smartphones.
This agenda of this storming, raw group — blue lipstick, army hats, pink hair — was twofold: taking to the streets in support of the Russian feminist punk collective but also participating as extras in the music video for “Free Pussy Riot” by Peaches, the Canadian electro musician, and the American artist Simonne Jones, which will hit iTunes Tuesday. All proceeds of the sale of the song will go to Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevitch, the three members of Pussy Riot who were tried for criticizing Putin in a protest poem in Moscow last March.
“PLEASE WEAR BRIGHT SOLID COLORS” read the instructions on the Facebook invite sent out only days prior.
“Hurry! Before police see us!” said Peaches, who led the event in purple spandex tights, a pink tank top and sneakers. On both of her arms the words “Pussy Riot” were scrawled in black marker. “Otherwise, I’ll have to pay a fine, and I’d rather send the money to Pussy Riot for their legal fees,” she said.
They were a lucky bunch, indeed — police did not disturb scene and the video was shot and executed flawlessly in 30 minutes.
The group, sporting custom-made balaclavas in of yellow, pink, green, purple and red, made
its way en masse to the nearby Mauerpark, a public park which translates to “Wall Park” in English, signifying its former part of the Berlin Wall.
A dance circle formed in the wild grass and broke into chant: “We are Pussy Riot!”
“They’re the most incredible conceptual artists in our time,” Peaches explained when she wasn’t directing the crowd to sit, stand up, hug and dance chaotically to absolute silence, adding that the point was not to get arrested but to show solidarity.
“Now I got to go home and finish writing the song,” she said, walking up a long cobblestone road.
And the crowd scattered.