Fig 1.The 2018 FIFA World Cup Final Championship Match, Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow.¹ (GIF by Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic, 2018)

Cops are Kissing Under Clouds

Angela Berry

On Sunday, July 15th, 2018 France defeated Croatia 4-2 in the FIFA World Cup Final at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. France’s victory, deemed a “breathless six-goal thriller,” was watched live by an estimated 88,011 attendees and 3.572 billion viewers, myself included.² 

When France and Croatia met on the recently renovated Soviet-era pitch they were greeted by a nearly windless, partly sunny day.³ Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would later populate the Moscow sky.⁴ Meteorological and political conditions were idyllic. In the first half, competition was tight. France held the lead by 2-1. At the start of the second, Croatia nearly tied the game with a box shot blocked by the goal post.

¹ Despite being hosted in Europe eleven times, Russia was the first Eastern European Host of the FIFA World Cup tournament in 2018.
Longman, Jeré. 2010. Russia and Qatar Win World Cup Bids. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/sports/soccer/03worldcup.html.

² Burt, Jason. 2018. France win World Cup 2018 final in breathless six-goal thriller against Croatia. The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-cup/2018/07/15/france-vs-croatia-world-cup-final-2018-live-score-latest-updates/.

³ Timeanddate.com. 2020. Past Weather in Moscow, Russia — July 2018. timeanddate.com. https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/russia/moscow/historic?month=7&year=2018.

⁴ Timeanddate.com. 2020. Planets Visible in the Night Sky Moscow, Russia — July 2018. timeanddate.com. https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/night/russia/moscow

Then a series of Croatian counter attacks were shortly interrupted in the fifty-second minute of the match. Play stopped as a prophetic band of earthly angels, or heavenly policemen rather, dressed in unofficial and outdated cop uniforms, blessed the pitch for forty-seconds before being escorted off camera by stadium security.⁵ The timing of the pitch invasion for France was heaven-sent. Within ten minutes French stars Paul Pogba and Kylian Mbappé scored two goals making the match the highest scoring World Cup Final since the 1960s.⁶ For everyone watching, it was not immediately (or inevitably) made clear that the four heavenly policemen, later identified as Veronica “Nika” Nikulshina, Olga Kurachyova, Olga Pakhtusova, and Pyotr Verzilov, were members of the Russian feminist punk artist performance collective Pussy Riot.⁷

Founded in Moscow in 2012, Pussy Riot gained national repute following a series of actions protesting the authoritarian overreach of Russian politician, former officer of the KGB and current President, Vladimir Putin.⁸ At the time, Putin was Prime Minister and had already served the legal limit of two consecutive terms as President. Yet, in 2012 he was elected for a third term that many supposed to be the result of election fraud and a violation of Russia’s constitution. The case was made for Putin that his recess from the Presidency while serving as Prime Minister was a legally valid interruption of consecutive holdings of office, despite the objections of tens of thousands of Russians.⁹ The anti-Putin movement triggered by Putin’s re-election in 2012, which included Pussy Riot’s non-violent metaphorical performance art, have since become validated. Putin has remained in office and recently extended his term to 2036.¹⁰

International audiences first became aware of Pussy Riot after a public art performance triggered retaliatory sentencing in 2012. The charge received by Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich for their participation in Pussy Riot’s anti-putin protest song “Punk Prayer” performed at Moscow’s Russian Orthodox church Cathedral of Christ the Savior was hooliganism. For Pussy Riot, the cathedral symbolized the failure of Putin to separate church and state.¹¹ Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina, and Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in prison.¹² 

Fig 2. European football season turf designs were a competitive regional art prior to bans enacted in the 2017/18 pro season. 
(Getty Images, 2018)¹³

Pussy Riot is certainly not the first self-organized group to cross the chalk line and stop play on a pitch. The rectangular 100+ yard canvas, varying green grass patterns, and shallow fence framing the field create an inspiring picture plane for football fans, players, and thrill seekers alike to act upon impulsively and fanatically. Each excessively enthusiastic raid leaves a uniquely manic mark and pattern behind for both live and television audiences’ viewing pleasure. 

Sports zealotry nourishes
a range of manias.

Obsessive thoughts regarding icons (iconomania), accumulating facts (infomania) and numbers (arithmomania), occupying open space (agromania), ecstatic dancing (choreomania), singular focus (monomania), and perhaps even delusions that objects are larger than their natural size (macromania) can all be metabolized under the guise of normalized fanfare. There are non-violent manic fans that parachute onto the field, shower inflatable beach balls onto the green, or take advantage of opportunities to strike a free kick. To the contrary, sports extremism also triggers darker devotions and obsessions. Namely to idols (idolmania) and fanaticism for one’s own people (ethnomania).¹⁴ There are violent manic fans who tragically target players for an object strike, organize lethal assassinations, or shoot fireworks and start turf fires.

¹³ llagher, Danny. 2017. ADVERTISEMENT Premier League bans elaborate pitch patterns ahead of the new season... putting an end to the award-winning designs of Leicester City and others. The Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-4757078/Premier-League-bans-elaborate-pitch-designs-2017-18.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490.

¹⁴ hitbullseye. n.d. List of 100+ types of Manias A comprehensive compilation of different kinds of manias to strengthen your vocabulary. hitbullseye. Accessed September 1, 2020. https://www.hitbullseye.com/Vocab/Types-of-Manias.php. We 

Pussy Riot’s publicity stunt during the FIFA World Cup Final played upon bedeviling thoughts that one could channel divine inspiration and then cheerfully delude oneself of a utopian concept, entheomania and habromania, respectively. After their pitch invasion, the pretext for the performance was soon revealed. Pussy Riot’s Policeman Enters The Game was a re-imagining of 1970s Russian conceptual, postmodern performance artist and poet Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov's creation of an idyllic or heavenly cop.¹⁶

The performance commemorated the eleventh anniversary of Prigov’s death and re-presented his utopian ideal of a civil servant for Russia to a global 21st century audience featuring over half of the world’s population.¹⁷ For Pussy Riot, the “heavenly policeman rises as an example of nationhood…” as an act of God, to make “...the earthly policeman that hurts everyone” obsolete.¹⁸ Pussy Riot’s raid at Luzhniki Stadium informed an international public of their anti-authoritarian resistance movement, invited support and participation in their cause, and challenged Putin’s displays of power and national pride. Like other field raiders that came before, Pussy Riot entered the game to capitalize on a literal and ideological window that exposed vulnerabilities in entertainment and political facades.

Policeman Enters The Game and other outrageous performances in sports arenas that stop play, such as televised proposals, changes in the weather, and unprogrammed acts, make audiences aware that the game in process interrupts everyday life. Not vice versa. These acts of mania all certainly deploy the dramatic convention of the fourth wall.

The momentary disruption of one observed phenomena, redirects focus to the conditions that have produced another; transforming spectators into spectator-citizens.

Sensitized to their duplicitous role as agents co-producing external geographic, socio-political, and historic cultural phenomena,  spectator-citizens become self-aware individuals and possibly agents of change.

Pussy Riot’s FIFA World Cup Final performance capitalized on a moment of Russia’s weakening influence at home and abroad.¹⁹ Aware of their authoritarian governments need for validation and the 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump’s desire to sow stronger personal, political, and economic ties with other fascist leaders across the world, they exploited Putin’s politicization of his role as FIFA’s host. ²⁰

¹⁵ Watson, Leon. 2012. Fowl play? Football fans release live chicken onto pitch as protest before seeing their club relegated. The Daily Mail UK. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2141076/Fowl-play-Football-fans-release-live-chicken-pitch-protest-seeing-club-relegated.html.

¹⁶ World Cup: Pussy Riot protesters jailed over pitch demonstration. 2018. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44846446.


¹⁷ Fedotova, Yelena. 2011. Dmitri Prigov: “great Russian poet”, postmodern artist, incarcerated “madman”. Open Democracy. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/dmitri-prigov-great-russian-poet-postmodern-artist-incarcerated-madman/. 


¹⁸ Hurley, Lee. 2018. Pussy Riot at the World Cup. Daily Canon. https://dailycannon.com/2018/07/pussy-riot-at-the-world-cup/.

¹⁹On the eve of the Helsinki summit, newsoutlet’s across the world ran headlines in the Sunday paper, providing historical context to FIFA’s World Cup Championship Final. “Just Sitting Down With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead” (NYTimes), “On eve of talks, Trump congratulates Putin and calls EU a trade ‘foe’’” (World News), “Vladimir Putin’s hopes for his long-awaited meeting with Donald Trump” (Economist), and “Trump casts doubt on US intelligence, calls Putin’s meddling denial ‘strong and powerful’” (abcNews).

²⁰Davidson, Adam. 2018. A Theory of Trump Kompromat. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-trump-kompromat.
Theories of Russia holding kompromat or compromising material over Trump have surfaced throughout his presidency. In particular, his dealings with Deutsche Bank and their ties to Russian banks are under scrutiny. Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who escaped Fascism in Czechoslovakia, has called Trump the first “anti-democratic president in U.S. history” and warned of a rise in American fascism in 2018 after publishing Fascism: A Warning (2018; HarperCollins). Albright has expressed fears that conditions are ripe to exploit a growing disenfranchised group of U.S. citizens, stoke tribalism, promote civil division, degrade human rights, discredit and erode democratic practices and institutions and the championing of violence and discrimation against minorities among other possibilities under a Trump administration.

Moscow’s stadium, formerly known as Central Lenin Stadium, is in itself a monument and a product of successful Russian strategic international policy. During the reign of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the stadium’s creation in 1956 marked the end of an era; the Soviet Union would no longer renounce international sport competition with Western nations as a bourgeois tool used to promote capitalism and elitism on the world stage.²¹ This position came, in part, after achieving remarkable success in their first appearance at the Helsinki Olympic Games held in Finland July 19, 1952.²² Following the cold war, the Soviets saw an opportunity to leverage their impressive performance in international play as a means to promote their particular brand of communism.

But the task of manipulating this moment for political gain in the summer of 2018, while presenting a friendly, hospitable and welcoming international front was awkward for Vladamir Putin. Just five months prior in March, more than twenty allies of the United Kingdom expelled one-hundred Russian diplomats, apparent spies, in response to the failed poisoning of former Kremlin defectors Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the English town of Salisbury.²³ Western nations had not sent such a unified warning to Russia since the Cold War.²⁴

Yet, shortly after, US President Donald Trump held the first summit in world history between the US and North Korea with renown authoritarian dictator and Chairman Kim Jong-Un a month prior to FIFA’s tournament. After the 2018 Singapore Summit, Trump broke ranks with Western nations again. He arranged his first in-person meeting with Putin in Helsinki the Monday following the world cup championship game. Helsinki, both the site of demonstrative Soviet athletic excellence in the 1952 Olympics and the site of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, has a history of easing Western and Soviet tensions.²⁵ Trump made international news on the eve of his meeting with Putin by designating the European Union a trade adversary. The US President attracted more international scrutiny during the summit. First, he suggested Russia rejoin the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations’ international economic organization, despite the suspension of Russia’s membership after their forced occupation in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in violation of International Law.²⁶ Then Trump sided with Putin, against the US Intelligence Community, in his denial of Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential elections.²⁷ 

²¹ Rabinovitch, Simon. n.d. The Soviet Union and the Olympics. Guided History. Accessed September 1, 2020. http://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/russia-and-its-empires/guy-mcfall/#:~:text=At%20the%20start%20of%20the,in%20the%20international%20Olympic%20Games. 

²² The USSR ranked second under the United States in overall medals, earning seventy one in total; just three shy of the seventy-four earned by the U.S. to secure first place. Egrov, Boris. 2018. The USSR’s own Olympics outshone the real thing. Russia Beyond. https://www.rbth.com/history/328953-soviet-own-olympics#:~:text=The%20USSR%20missed%20every%20Olympic,different%20political%20and%20ideological%20reasons.&text=The%20Soviet%20leadership%20didn't,world%20of%20international%20sport%2C%20though.

²³ Borger, Julian, Patrick Wintour, and Heather Stewart. 2018. Western allies expel scores of Russian diplomats over Skripal attack. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/26/four-eu-states-set-to-expel-russian-diplomats-over-skripal-attack.

²⁴ Corera, Gordon. 2018. Salisbury poisoning: What did the attack mean for the UK and Russia? BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51722301.

²⁵ An Atlantic article published on June 28th, 2020 notes that while the 1975 summit “brought together world leaders with clear goals about cooperation” this summit was marked by the lack of agenda save for Putin’s attempt to “rearrange the security order in Europe” and Trump's provocation of instability. Standish, Reid. 2018. The Meaning of a U.S.-Russia Summit in Helsinki. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/06/finland-helsinki-russia-trump-united-states-summit/564074/.

²⁶ Acosta, Jim. 2014. U.S., other powers kick Russia out of G8 By Jim Acosta, CNN Senior White House Correspondent. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2014/03/24/politics/obama-europe-trip/index.html.

²⁷ The New York Times. Trump-Putin Summit Is Over. The Head-Scratching? Not So Much. 2018. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/16/world/europe/trump-putin-summit-helsinki.html. Since the Trump administration’s campaign of outreach to authoritarian leaders in the summer of 2018, the U.S. has maintained relentless and unprecedented efforts to aid Russia’s return to the world stage, prop up authoritarian regimes, and either discredit or downplay the significance of hostile authoritarian acts against the U.S. and its allies.

For political leaders with an affinity for authoritarianism and for Pussy Riot, Russia hosting FIFA's World Cup Championship Tournament was a match made in heaven.

And so it came to pass that Nikulshina, Kurachyova, Pakhtusova, Verzilov, four punk artists acting as cops, overran football players and stadium officers alike for nearly a minute in the July 15th, 2018 FIFA World Cup championship to sound the alarm and call for a global anti-authoritiarian movement.

Pussy Riots’ pitch invasion was a throwback to low budget halftime acts enlisted to entertain sparsely populated stadiums hosting club teams or little leagues. A friendly group of fools, clowning around and scoring hi-fives from players is a familiar athletic trope for sports audiences.³⁰ The FIFA World Cup is the most watched live corporate sports event in the world, but for all its legitimacy, I still expected a launchgun to deliver a rain of poorly designed t-shirts featuring six corporate sponsorship logos in textile glory to the crowd following Pussy Riot’s performance.³¹

²⁸ 2018 FIFA World Cup. 2018. Adidas Football Reveals Official Match Ball for the Knockout Stage of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. FIFA.com. https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/adidas-football-reveals-official-match-ball-for-the-knockout-stage-of-the-2018-f.

²⁹ Silver, Vernon. 2018. Putin’s Soccer Ball for Trump Had Transmitter Chip, Logo Indicates. Bloomberg News. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-25/putin-soccer-ball-for-trump-had-transmitter-chip-logo-indicates.

³⁰ FIFA. n.d. FIFA Financial Report 2018. FIFA. Accessed September 1, 2020. https://resources.fifa.com/image/upload/xzshsoe2ayttyquuxhq0.pdf.

³¹ FIFA. 2018. More than half the world watched record-breaking 2018 World Cup. FIFA.com. https://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/more-than-half-the-world-watched-record-breaking-2018-world-cup#:~:text=A%20combined%203.572%20billion%20viewers,the%202018%20FIFA%20World%20Cup.

Fig 8a-b. Nikulshina high-fives rising French teenage star Kylian Mbappé. (Rose/The Getty, 2018)

For those of us watching live, it was clear that the pitch invaders were not dressed like fanatical fans. They didn’t obsessively solicit the touch of a beloved player or team, although Nikulshina did manage to score a high-five from rising French teenage star Kylian Mbappé. They weren’t backed by pop star entourages and pyrotechnic displays, flaunting million dollar entertainment contracts. In fact, they seemed ambivalent about the stakes of the game in progress, but certainly invested in another game with different stakes. They were having fun, for their president, the camera, and for us. In the way that students streaking through a quad expect to be watched by a stunned student body, administrator, or faculty in transit. The performers were concerned with publicly confronting and ridiculing a power dynamic that was not just present at the time of the action, but whose presence was pervasive and overwhelmingly restricting and threatening their personal freedom at large. The lack of nudity and the addition of police mimicry seemed less a call for juvenile disobedience and more a call for civil disobedience.

Fig 9-10. Pussy Riot at the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final Championship Match, Luzhniki Stadium, Moscow. Top: (Cox, 2018) Bottom: (Stavrakis, Thanassis 2018)³²

“Hello everyone from Luzhniki field, it’s great here. The FIFA World Cup has reminded us of the possibilities of the heavenly policeman in the Great Russia of the future, but the earthly policeman, entering the ruleless game breaks our world apart.”

“When the earthly policeman enters the game, we demand to:

1. Let all political prisoners free.
2. Not imprison for “likes”.
3. Stop illegal arrests on rallies.
4. Allow political competition in the country.
5. Not fabricate criminal accusations and not keep people in jails for no reason.
6. Turn the earthly policeman into the heavenly policeman.”³³

³² Despite being hosted in Europe eleven times, Russia was the first Eastern European Host of the FIFA World Cup tournament in 2018.
Longman, Jeré. 2010. Russia and Qatar Win World Cup Bids. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/03/sports/soccer/03worldcup.html.

³³ Nyren, Erin. 2018. Pussy Riot Claims Responsibility for People Running Onto Field During World Cup. Variety. https://variety.com/2018/biz/news/pussy-riot-world-cup-people-running-onto-field-1202873620/. Nadya Tolokonnikova, a founding Pussy Riot member who spent two years in prison following her participation in the piece Punk Prayer (2012) explained the interruption in an interview with CNN: “We’ve seen authoritarian tendencies...parading all around the world...we think...it’s time to create a global people’s movement...if we want to find an alternative to this raid of populism, which we’ve seen in my own country Russia, and in America too with Donald Trump, and in the UK.”

When asked whether the protest and the global exposure were successful, Kyrachyova described the pitch invasion as “30-40 seconds of total happiness” and Nikulshina added:

“Running on the football field was probably one of the best moments of my life. If you’re asking whether the government met all of the [demands] we were asking for, then of course not... But, one of the main aims of actions like this is to grab a lot of attention...For us, it’s totally not right to separate politics from FIFA and World Cup Final….If we hadn’t stopped the game, the message would not have been clear. We really wanted to show people that you can live your life, or you can play your own game, and at any time for no reason, the police will just ruin your life and do whatever they want — as we did to the field.”” ³⁴

Pussy Riot’s evocation of Dmitri Prigov at the FIFA World Cup Final recalled policemen as a vintage Soviet panoptic form. It was a sinister and absurd performance watching angry, scared, and serious active duty cops restraining the laughing, dancing, skipping, and joyful fake cops. One that a dissident, mystic, leftist, madman, prisoner, comedian, hack wit, postmodern performance artist, poet, and renaissance human would have undoubtedly commended and enjoyed. Prigov wrote a complex of poems realizing an idyllic vision of a heavenly policeman that began his career. The poet's playful textual provocations co-opted cop as muse.

Despite individual and institutional efforts to suppress the use of athletic programs as a political stage, there is a significant history of athletes protesting crimes against humanity live on air.³⁷ Yet, Policeman Enters The Game stands out from other sporting event protests because, as performance artists, the dissidents are not a part of the athletic franchise complex. And while Pussy Riot may be outsiders within this history of athletic civil disobedience, the use of entertainment platforms to protest state-sanctioned violence by mimicking authoritarian officials in dress and action has many precedents in performance art.

In the first half of the 20th century, the classically outfitted cop became the perfect monument to examine and portray authoritarian terror as an entertainment form.

In part, perhaps, because the popularization of time and lens-based mediums like film, photography, and public broadcasting coincided with World War I and the rise and spread of fascist regimes in WWII. For performance artists mimicking police as a critical form, dress is key to signifying nuanced institutional critique.

³⁶ Shurley, Dan. 2020. Dan Shurley reviews Soviet Texts by Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov. Asymptote, Ugly Duckling Press. https://www.asymptotejournal.com/criticism/dmitri-aleksandrovich-prigov-soviet-texts/.


³⁷ In 2020, the International Olympic Committee voted to ban any “kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda in...sites, venues…” and punish violators at the 2020 Tokyo Games. This summer a cascade of sports teams, franchises and athletes have protested sanctioned, militarized, systemic violence and oppression against black lives in a revival of civil support for the Black Lives Matter social justice movement founded by Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors. Following the nearly fatal shooting of Kenosha, Wisconsin black resident Jacob Blake in front of his three children, the WNBA team the Washington Mystics wore T-shirts with seven bullets on the back, the amount of shots used by Kenosha Wisconsin police to shoot Blake. (Aguilar 2020)

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Fig 13. As a vagrant-citizen turned citizen-cop in Easy Street (1917), Chaplain accented his official outfit with a signature toothbrush mustache by cutting down a stick-on sized mustache he found in a studio dressing room during an appearance on The Keystone Kops.³⁸ Later, Chaplain retired his signature persona and outfit, commonly known as The Tramp, after playing a Jewish barber suffering from amnesia who is mistaken for Hitler (Adenoid Hynkel in film) during Nazi occupation in The Great Dictator (1940), which he wrote, produced, and directed. ³⁹  

Often patrolling alone, excessive force and militant reinforcement is just a radio wave away. The dress and official accessories - badge, weapon, car, and the conspicuous airs enabled by immunity - reveal where a citizen and a cop begin and end. Early 19th century examples like Mack Sennett’s The Keystone Kops of Bangville (1912-1917) and Charlie Chaplin’s Easy Street (1917) both come to mind. Actors playing cops in these films mocked and ridiculed the authoritarian trappings of real world police forces by portraying officers as entirely ineffective; thus, unable to exercise or abuse their power. Another example can be found in creative-life partners, known as ‘Les mesdames,’ Lucy Schwob (aka Claude Cahun) and Suzanne Malherbe’s (aka Marcel Moore). Cahun and Moore staged a two-person performance-resistance campaign known as ‘Der Soldat Ohne Namen’ (The Soldier Without a Name) on the Channel Islands during Nazi occupation.  ⁴⁰

³⁸ Vance, Jeffrey. 2003. “Chaplin at Keystone: The Tramp is Born.” In Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams. https://www.charliechaplin.com/en/articles/212-Chaplin-at-Keystone-The-Tramp-is-Born?category=filming#:~:text=The%20birth%20of%20modern%20screen,at%20the%20Keystone%20Film%20Company.

³⁹ Basu, Anjan. 2019. We Should Be Grateful Charlie Chaplin Made "The Great Dictator" When He Did. The Wire. https://thewire.in/film/charlie-chaplin-the-great-dictator.

⁴⁰ Williams, Jessie. 2020. Claude Cahun: Jersey’s queer, anti-Nazi freedom fighter A soldier with no name. Huck Mag. https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/art-2/claude-cahun-jerseys-queer-anti-nazi-freedom-fighter/.

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Fig 14. Self portrait of Cahun defiantley posing with the Nazi War Eagle hate symbol the year of the Channel Island’s liberation by British forces, 1945.  Cahun and Moore left disobedient anonymous notes for Nazi soldiers signed from a fellow no-name officer in hopes of sowing division. Eventually they were discovered leaving subversive notes and were sentenced to execution. Miraculoulsy, the executions were never carried out, as the Nazi’s were defeated before the sentencing proceeded. (Cahun, 1945)
Image source: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/art-2/claude-cahun-jerseys-queer-anti-nazi-freedom-fighter/, Huck Mag Self Portrait Claude Cahun, May 8, 1945.

In Policeman Enters The Game, Pussy Riot members wore a European style of police dress, which often is attributed to the 19th century English “Bobby.” This style was adopted by Russian law enforcement in the 21st century during a transition from the relict “militsiya” Soviet-era force to the “politsiya,” Russia’s first police force, in 2011.⁴¹ Crisp white collared long sleeved button down shirts paired with a navy tie and suit accented by red stitching and stripes, gold stars and professional flat oxfords are typical components of a Bobby’s uniform. Subversive depictions on this classic dress include oversized and unkempt clothes, uniforms lacking insignia, absurd facial hair, poor physical and mental performance, displays of generosity (pardoning) and emotion (kissing, crying). These kinds of performance strategies puncture the measure to which respective audiences confront the myth of cop as hero or savior. Pussy Riots message was particularly relevant to Western audiences where seeds of authoritarianism are growing.


The Bobbies were a first edition of sorts of the Scotland Yard. The Bobby evolved from 17th and 18th century watchmen and petty constables. Their historic charge was to “keep the King’s peace” as the “King’s men.”⁴² These civil servants were initially unpaid, unarmed, young, white, working class males. Some were army veterans, rotating volunteers shifts for their resident parish to watch for and deter petty crimes in blue uniforms.⁴³ “Bobbies” are often considered the principal professional police force.

⁴¹ Police reform in the Russian Federation during the nation's democratization process has been criticized as a decorative attempt to renew public trust; nominally successful at disassociating the public from troubling unlawful behavior carried over from a long history of authoritarianism. Reynolds, Michael K., and Olga B. Semukhina. 2014. Understanding The Modern Russian Police. Rutgers Newark. Wikipedia. 2020. Russian Police Reform. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_police_reform#:~:text=Main%20changes%20and%20aims%20of%20the%20reform,-Name%20change&text=Under%20the%20reform%2C%20the%20name,police%20on%201%20March%202011. https://clcjbooks.rutgers.edu/books/understanding-the-modern-russian-police/.
Sergevnin, Vladimir. 2013. Policing in Russia. Research Gate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291382515_Policing_in_Russia.

⁴² Lepore, Jill. 2020. The Invention of the Police. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police.

The post of “night watchmen” was actually brought to England first from the United States. Former plantation shareholder, agent of British cotton manufacturers Patrick Coquhoun established the Thames River police shortly after returning to Glasgow from Virginia and taking the post of Chief Magistrate to prevent pirating of West Indian goods.⁴⁴ In matters of who thieves who, Coquhoun helped establish the current precedent; it's the thief backed by law. In this instance, the law would be The Doctrine of Discovery, which states that territories uninhabited by Christians are vacant and may be colonized by Christian nations regardless of the occupation of Indigenous and non-Christian societies.⁴⁵

Prior to forming the professional police force, night watchmen in the United States enforced regional agendas. In the North Eastern United States, the night watchmen protected influential businessmen and politicians of the early colonies, particularly through the control and abuse of working class immigrants. In the South Eastern United States, night watchmen or “slave patrols” were established to enforce slave codes. Southern night watchmen carried on their person guns, whips, and ropes for lynching. After the Civil War some of these night watchmen formed the white supremist group the Klu-Klux-Klan and other night watchmen evolved into the first US police force. These officers were initially outfitted from a stockpile of army surplus after the Civil War.⁴⁶ Police outfits evolved to maintain visual likeness to the US military throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Consequently, the militant roots of the US watchmen and its ties to domestic white male terrorism against minorities, in partiuclar slaves, indegenious populations, and immigrants, passed into to the UK police system.⁴⁷  

In contrast to the US, the UK’s evolution of early police uniforms from this era was intended to institutionalize and professionalize the post of constable as a reputable position of public service. This was pursued first and foremost by differentiating the police force visually from the military's red and white dress.⁴⁸ The blue uniforms, lack of weaponry, and identification were intended to make officers appear as approachable and safe figures of public trust, akin to pilots.

⁴³ Emsley, Clive. 2018. The rise of the Great British ‘bobby’: a brief history of Britain’s police service. History Extra. https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/the-rise-of-the-great-british-bobby-a-brief-history-of-britains-police-service/.

⁴⁴ Wells, David and Alexander, Leah. The Thames River Police. 2017. Inside Time: The National Newspaper for Prisoners & Detainees. https://insidetime.org/the-thames-river-police-2/.

⁴⁵ Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples. 2016. Christopher Columbus and the Doctrine of Discovery - 5 Things to Now. Working Effectively with Indigenous Peoples. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/christopher-columbus-and-the-doctrine-of-discovery-5-things-to-know.
⁴⁶ Lepore, Jill. 2020. The Invention of the Police. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/the-invention-of-the-police.

⁴⁷ Wells, David and Alexander, Leah. The Thames River Police. 2017. Inside Time: The National Newspaper for Prisoners & Detainees. https://insidetime.org/the-thames-river-police-2/.

⁴⁸ Emsley, Clive. 2018. The rise of the Great British ‘bobby’: a brief history of Britain’s police service. History Extra. https://www.historyextra.com/period/modern/the-rise-of-the-great-british-bobby-a-brief-history-of-britains-police-service/.

Further differentiating the US from other Western nations, is the accessorizing of police with lethal weapons, in particular firearms and methods of deadly force. Most U.K. police still do not carry guns. Instead of arms, the ninety-percent of unarmed law enforcement carry mace, batons, handcuffs among other non lethal tools or weapons.⁴⁹Keeping officers unarmed was a founding principle of the parliamentary police force and a result of an 1829 policing philosophy still in practice called “Policing by Consent.” In the UK “Policing by Consent” is a philosophy that follows the below guidelines among others:

The list of “General Instructions” is heavenly in contrast to the militarized police institutions of countries like the United States, recently amplified by racial justice uprisings in the United States ignited in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Policeman Derek Chauvin, with the physical restraining support of Officers J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, and the observation and control over protesting public bystanders by Officer Tou Thao. Protests after Floyd’s death have been organized all over the world. The violent force used to suppress these protests have amplified the inevitability of systematic abuse of lethal force. Chemical weapons, like tear gas have been banned in war since the Geneva Protocol of 1925, yet policemen in the United States are permitted to use this weapon in violation of international human rights law with immunity, because of a loophole. The United States negotiated and retained its right to use chemical weapons against rioting prisoners of war to deter civilian casualties.⁵¹

In the mid 20th century, the US police departments made attempts to demilitarize their police uniforms in efforts to renew trust and respect with their public. Actions taken like reducing and concealing weapons, dressing in blue, and carrying self-identification in clearly written name tags had short-term success.⁵² But there was a backlash and efforts to demilitarize the police supposedly sowed a stronger division. In the United States, according to the last census, there are 245 to 310 million guns in the country and 305 million people. In the UK by contrast there are less than half a million firearms documented in the country compared to its population of 66.65 million. Clearly, guns beget guns. This condition can be best understood through the Checkov’s gun principle; weapon enters stage left, weapon fires in the next act.⁵³

⁴⁹ Smith, Alexander. March. The Vast Majority of U.K. Police Don't Carry Guns. Here's Why. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/why-london-won-t-arm-all-police-despite-severe-terror-n737551.

⁵⁰ UK.GOV. 2012. FOI release Definition of policing by consent. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-by-consent/definition-of-policing-by-consent#:~:text=To%20recognise%20always%20that%20the,secure%20and%20maintain%20public%20respect.

⁵¹ Sadeghi, McKenzie. 2020. Fact check: It's true tear gas is a chemical weapon banned in war. USA Today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/06/fact-check-its-true-tear-gas-chemical-weapon-banned-war/3156448001/

⁵² Marshall, Aarian. 2014. A History of Police Uniforms—and Why They Matter. Bloomberg City Lab. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-18/a-history-of-police-uniforms-and-why-they-matter.

⁵³ TV Tropes. Chekhov's Gun. n.d. TVTropes.org. Accessed September 1, 2020. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun. Can 

Sociologists, John Paul and Michael L. Birzer  define the militarization of the police uniform in the context of the United States policing system as military in Images of Power: An Analysis of the Militarization of Police Uniforms and Messages of Service as “battle dress fatigues (BDUs),” that set the stage for an at war relationship.⁵⁴ They describe the effect BDU has on police:

⁵⁴ Paul, John, and Michael L. Birzer. 2004. Image of Power: An Analysis of the Militarization of Police Uniforms and Messages of Service. Library OKState (Free Library). https://ojs.library.okstate.edu/osu/index.php/FICS/article/view/1530.

By controlling and oppressing the liberties of a majority to ensure the gains and privilege of a few, the earthly policeman described by Paul and Birzer protect the rule of authoritarian regimes. These earthly policemen prioritize the protection of a king, a dictator, influential businessmen or businesses, colonizers, and unjust laws in favor of the rewards and immunity offered by a centralized power.


Spectator-citizens have often addressed the devastating cost of systemic violence by demanding the creation of an angelic watch that exposes the lethal and harmful restrictions of personal and political freedom that the earthly police enforce.⁵⁵ A grassroot network of artists collectives like Russia’s Pussy Riot, the Wide Awakes, a non-violent US abolitionist entertainment collective established in 1860 and recently revived in 2015 by activists in the Sunrise Movement and in 2020 by contemporary artist Hank Willis Thomas and friends, the mid 20th century European avant-garde revolutionary social organization the Situationist International, and the late 20th century Polish group Orange Alternative among others have each invented their own versions of such a watch.⁵⁶

A criticism that often levels the multi-faceted practices of artists working in, around and through postmodern art movements is that discourse shatters intent and degrades meaning derived through visual systems. For artists committed to dressing the part -  for Prigov, then Pussy Riot, and now us -  it is the creation and projection of image as double-agent that rebukes cynical regard for context and determines how visual forms function in everyday life; transforming spectators into a spectator-citizens. Once a citizen is made, allegiance is pledged to not only territory, but also the ideal that the sacred rights and privileges they are owed under law will be secure irregardless of whether their state provides such protections.

Citizens can not be discovered or created through another’s will, however forceful. They occupy and determine certain futures through active watch followed by action, with the utmost intention. A heavenly watch is coincidentally one of the six rules proposed by former police detective and infamous NYPD whistleblower Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino in the Serpico to address the ever worsening accountability and behavior of policemen. Serpico criticized the corrupted institution of policing as recently as 2014, asserting, “Today’s uncontrolled firepower, combined with a lack of good training and adequate screening of police academy candidates, has led to a devastating drop in standards….It’s like the Keystone Kops, but without being funny at all.”⁵⁷ In Serpico’s words, “last but not least, police cannot police themselves.” Bang, bang, beat, there are no heavenly cops or easy streets.


At the 2018 FIFA World Cup Final  Pussy Riot offered their image of the exaggerated difference between cops that kiss and dance and ones that hurt and kill. This is the image acting as double-agent, reliant on both the a priori knowledge of a citizen and the a posteriori knowledge of a spectator. Holding both a dystopia and utopia in one hand, the contrast inspires abstract and concrete futures. Can militant forces protecting undemocratic laws retire and ban their favorite accessories; chemical weapons, fire arms, political and corporate favor, and immunity? Anything worn or embodied that could hurt anyone may then be forgone. Then, cops are kissing under clouds.

Fig 17-24. Pussy Riot, Video Stills from Track About Good Cop (2018, 3:40 minutes). The performance group released a companion music video “Track About Good Cop” on July 18th, following the World Cup Final, to complement their actions and social media statements.⁵⁸ (Pussy Riot 2018)