RACHEL SERMANNI’s debut album most beautiful album of the year?

Scotland’s RACHEL SERMANNI has been on our radar for some time. Every gig a memory to be treasured, every conversation something unique, every track a humble pleasure to behold. On sale now, her debut album UNDER MOUNTAINS has been a long anticipated series of precious melodies. A truly talented artist, if you don’t get this, you’re missing out. Continue reading RACHEL SERMANNI’s debut album most beautiful album of the year?

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT – Lisa Gornick

Lisa Gornick is a London-based filmmaker, writer, artist and actress. She has made two feature films Do I Love You and Tick Tock Lullaby, and is now working on a third. In this video of her opening speech at the recent 9 Sept FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON Fundraiser Concert, she lists 10 reason why she wants to be part of Pussy Riot: Continue reading FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT – Lisa Gornick

ESBEN AND THE WITCH say FREE PUSSY RIOT

Next up in our ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT photo campaign is Brighton’s very own ESBEN AND THE WITCH – we caught the band at Manchester’s Soup Kitchen after their stunning live gig on 30 Aug. Singer Rachel Davies also joined the 9 September FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON fundraiser concert lineup for a stunning DJ set on the very special night in honour of jailed activists Masha, Katya and Nadya. Thank you, Rachel! Continue reading ESBEN AND THE WITCH say FREE PUSSY RIOT

Handwritten Letters from PUSSY RIOT’s Masha, Katya & Nadya

For the 9 September 2012 Free Pussy Riot Fundraiser Concert held at Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen in London, SHATTERJAPAN specially requested personal handwritten letters from jailed Pussy Riot members Masha, Katya and Nadia. We were astonished and emotional when we received the letters — they are full of such passion, hope, courage and compassion. It is remarkable that these eloquent words were written by the women behind bars who are facing a long prison sentence and the tragic possibility of being split up into separate penal colonies as Moscow draws closer to freezing wintertime. Continue reading Handwritten Letters from PUSSY RIOT’s Masha, Katya & Nadya

Video messages from PUSSY RIOT lawyers

For the 9 September 2012 Free Pussy Riot Fundraiser Concert held at Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen in London, SHATTERJAPAN specially requested the following video messages from the lawyers defending the three jailed Pussy Riot members Nadya, Katya and Masha. In this heartfelt video, Mark Feygin, Violetta Volkova and Nikolay Polozov thank the British public for its support and emphasize the importance of international pressure.

Continue reading Video messages from PUSSY RIOT lawyers

NINA PALEY Interview

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Nina Paley is a New York based comic artist and animator, best known for her feature film Sita Sings the Blues, a colourful, imaginative and humorous retelling of the ancient Hindu scripture the Ramayana, the story of the divine incarnation Rama who is exiled to the forest with his wife Sita and his brother Laxmana. Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana and eventually rescued by her husband. Made in a variety of styles, it features songs by 1920s’ singer Annette Hanshaw to express Sita’s woes. The film also chronicles the artist’s own story that led to the making of the film.

The film was an instant success on the film festival circuit, and wherever it was shown, winning several awards along the way, but in an unusual move for a modern filmmaker, Nina decided to make the film available to everyone, releasing it under a Creative Commons licence. Dedicated to this distribution ethic, Nina turned down a distribution offer from Netflix, one of the biggest distributors of online films in the US, because they would not, or could not, remove the DRM that she is opposed to.

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Why did you choose to animate the story of Sita and Ram?
Oh my goodness, I was so moved by it, and I had this horrendous break-up I was going through…

As portrayed in the film.
Exactly. So I went to India and read my first Ramayana there, and was fascinated with it, and I went through this break-up, and I felt like everything I saw was the Ramayana. I couldn’t get away from it. I cheesy way to say it would be, “I didn’t choose the story, it chose me”.

How did you go about developing the style for the film?
The style for the musical numbers I started while I was in Trivandrum, but I had no idea I was going to make a film. I was just drawing as a way to process all the images that were around me, and I thought maybe I’ll just do a couple of little drawings, or a little comic book or something, and that style just kind of appeared while I was in India. The rest of the styles in the film – I knew I wanted to use a lot of styles because, prior to making Sita, all of my short film I’d made in different styles. I like to work in lots of different styles to keep myself interested. I was reading as many Ramayanas as I could, and looking at as much Ramayana related art as I could, and I know there is a huge tradition of Ramayana related art from around the world, and there’s all these different, gorgeous styles from different regions and times, and I wanted to put some of that into the film, and I guess that’s what I did.

There’s also the Amar Chitra Katha comics as well…
That was the first Ramayana I ever saw.

Were there problems with Hindu fundamentalists when the film came out?
Fundamentalists were opposed to it from the beginning, and they’re still opposed to it. I suspect they assume because it’s a feature film it has a lot of publicity and they can ride on that publicity, but the fact is the only publicity it has is word of mouth. They are actually generating free publicity for the film and probably benefiting the film more by complaining about than they would if they ignored it.

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You talk about the word-of-mouth aspect of promoting the film, is that the main way you’ve got audiences for it, apart from festival screenings?
Yeah. The film is free. I gave it to the audience in April of 2009, so it belongs to the audience and they share it with each other, and it spreads almost entirely through word of mouth. The audience includes all sorts of people and entities, and sometimes the audience includes movie reviewers, but I don’t have any paid PR people that are hitting up the movie reviewers. I’m still not sure how movie reviewers work. I know when the film had its theatrical run in New York, the New York Times was obligated to write a review of it. I guess certain papers write reviews of films that are running for a week or more in the city. So there’s word of reviewers, word of mouth. I would say the main way it is spreading is virally, where people see it, and if they like it they’ll send it to other people. I’ve met people in real life who’ve told me. “I loved your film and I’ve sent it to all my friends to see it”, so that seems to work quite well. Hopefully their friends will tell their friends.

What made you decide to make it a free film? Logically, it seems counterproductive.
It’s actually super productive. It’s hyper-productive. Basically, I wanted the film to be seen, and the existing models for releasing independent films lead to a lot of great films that just don’t get seen, because they don’t have a way to spread because of the way copyright works, and so-called intellectual property works, is by restricting people’s access to a work. You put a wall around something and then people can only get through that wall if they go through an authorised channel and pay for it. With small films, that tends to be really hard to do, it’s not really easy to find. It’s not usually worth the expense to keep it in cinemas, so even if people are happy to pay whatever to see the film, there’s not enough people that know about the film to actually have it running in the cinema. I saw so many films die in obscurity on the festival circuit, I didn’t want that to happen to my film. Of course, there was the whole issue of clearing the old songs.

The whole point is that people can see the film and the more that see it, the more the value of the film increases. When it runs in a cinema, the more people will pay for cinema tickets because we can’t afford the film, and they have to know about it some way. Seeing a film in the cinema is very different to seeing it online, especially as most people who have already seen it, have seen it in some other form. They pay to see it in a cinema for the cinema experience. None of this would happen if they weren’t sharing the film with each other, because no one would know about the film, and I’ve seen that happen to plenty of great films, and I didn’t want it to happen to mine. So I freed it.

You are quite outspoken about copyright, is this the same issue about getting the film seen and don’t want it controlled by corporations?
I want people to be able to see it. There’s cultural value and money value, and there’s price, which is something different from value. Cultural works have more value the more they are seen, and I need to distinguish free. Free has two meanings in English, there’s gratis, as in free beer, and libera, which free, as in free speech. I still charge money for copies. When it’s in cinemas I still charge money for tickets. We charge for any scarce goods associated with the film, it’s just that the content is free. Anyone can quote the film, copy the film, build on the film, and all that. It’s such a simple concept that we’re not used to it after a couple of hundred years of copyright. I think of my film as just like Shakespeare. Wouldn’t it be cool to be Shakespeare? It would be awesome to be Shakespeare. If Shakespeare came back today, would he be a pauper? No he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t be getting royalties on his plays because they are in the public domain, but he would get enormous speaking fees, for example, if he wanted to speak. He would get gifts. All these fears that artists have about, “We’re gonna be poor, we’re gonna die on the street”, are just not true. But royalties represent price – they don’t even represent price. Royalties aren’t how most artists make their living, they’re not how I make my living. I wanted to free the film because I was worried about the cultural value of the film and I wanted it to have cultural value. What surprised me was I’d made significantly more money freeing the film.

In China and Brazil, for example, musicians don’t charge for their music CDs because they get pirated, so they make their money from live performances and merchandise, and they are two of the strongest economies in the world at the moment.
I actually charge for DVDs, but I charge for the copies that I sell, but I don’t charge for the copies that you make. It doesn’t cost me anything if someone makes a copy of my film. It costs me something if I make a copy, so if I make a copy I will sell it to you for money and what I am charging you for is the copy. Not the content, but the copy. If you make a copy, I haven’t lost anything.

Which is so wonderfully expressed in that song you did, Copying Is Not Theft.


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You’re also doing your own Sita merchandising…
Other people could certainly do that, but nobody is. It’s weird. Anybody could make Sita merchandise, but no one is. It makes sense because the only reason people buy merchandise is to support the artist and they want to know they are supporting me. Also, making merchandise is a pain in the ass. Who wants to go through that pain in the ass? If they wait long enough I’ll go through it.

What about those bags, are they being made in India?
The bags are made in India, but they weren’t my idea. The bags were the idea of an organisation called Ubuntu at Work that is trying to come up with projects that these women artisans can make and can have some control over. The Sita bags were just an experiment. I didn’t ask them to make them, they came to me, and I said, “Sure, if you make them I’ll try and sell them on my website”. I’m more excited about the Sita dolls that are coming up, which are going to the appliquéd and embroidered Sita part, but instead of being on a bag they’ll be their own stuffed thing and they’ll be less expensive and hopefully interesting works of art. But that project is to support the artisans involved, not so much me. It’s not royalty generation, it’s not for profit.

Is it the same ethic as the movie, to support the creators and not the distributors?
Somewhat. It’s sort of a new thing. It was just a surprise that this organisation approached me. It was just an opportunity that came up and I was like, “Sure, I’ll check this out”. I don’t really know what to make of it, except that it’s interesting and we’ll see if people buy the stuff, and if they do these women will have more work, and if they don’t, they’ll come up with some other product.

Do you think it is important for artists to diversify into as many different areas as they can?
I don’t think all artists are suited to it. I basically do what I want to do and it happens that I enjoy, even though it’s a pain making merch I enjoy designing things, so I’m suited to it. I really don’t think this is a model, or a box, that one should try and fit into. It would be very cool if there were services for filmmakers who didn’t want to do this kind of work, who could get merch or other ancillary products without having to set up their own stores, and without having to sign licensing agreements. Most of the business models around film only work with restrictive licences. Rather substantial publishers were interested in doing a Sita graphic novel, which would have been great except they didn’t want it to be open licensed, so there’s no Sita book. However, there are publishers that do open license books, but they don’t do pop culture stuff. O’Reilly does lots of books, so it’s a pretty solid business model, but these pop culture publishers don’t believe it yet and it’s probably going to be a few years until they do. That’s just one example of the kind of service that could exist to support artists.

So you haven’t thought about going on the self-publishing or print-on-demand route?
The potential for exploitation is much, much greater than what I’m actually doing. Again, I would love to work with publishers, I would love to work with other merchandisers, but I’m sure there are others who could make much more merch and sell it to other people, but they’re not, probably because they’ve never worked with an open license before.

sitasingstheblues.com
questioncopyright.com
ninapaley.com

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FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT Press Release

For Immediate Release: 12 September, 2012

FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON FUNDRAISER CONCERT IS OVERWHELMING SUCCESS

On Sunday 9 September, London’s Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen saw its busiest Sunday for some time. The event, which drew in the bustling Hoxton crowds, was a fundraiser concert hosted by SHATTERJAPAN, POPULAR COMPANY and WHITE ON WHITE, in support of the three jailed Russian Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – AKA Nadya, Masha and Katya.

Continue reading FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT Press Release

Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

Karin Park has been impressing us with her live shows ever since her London album launch where, despite a sudden power cut, the Swedish electro ice queen performed, unfazed by the unexpected glitch.

The new album Highwire Poetry also won Karin more brownie points — listening to the album on loop, it was clear that it was only a matter of time before UK audiences discovered the Swedish sensation. Live shows at London’s Shacklewell Arms and Manchester’s Castle convinced us further that Karin was an icon in the making.

Continue reading Karin Park blows the venue in Hoxton London – twice!

KARIN PARK Interview

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Swedish electro goddess KARIN PARK is a rare phenomenon. She has distinctive killer recorded and live vocals. She has a killer look. She has killer lyrics that push the boundaries of imagination and sensation. She and brother David give killer live performances. To match her high-level professionalism, she demonstrates sincere appreciation for her fans and colleagues, and profound consideration for other artists, having been a critical voice of support in our pussy riot commemoration concerts. One could argue that it is her upbringing in Japan that may have sparked her imagination and professional ethic, but one could also argue that it is simply her natural charm and energy which she has successfully projected into her work. Either way, the music world is a better place for having Karin Park.

No stranger to the music industry, Karin is onto her fourth album with 2012’s “Highwire Poetry.” Needless to say, it’s one of those albums that stays with you. Having supported the likes of Gary Numan, SBTRKT and Azari & III, she’s also due to support Toronto’s Dragonette in Zurich in April and we’re hoping to see a lot more of her in 2013.

We meet up with Karin on the terrace of the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, the London venue where she was preparing to give a live performance and where just the day before she brought down the roof with a pounding DJ set at our FREE PUSSY RIOT LONDON CONCERT. After reminiscing over the previous day’s activities, we move on to talk her love of music, creative evolution, and Japan.

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How did you get into music?  What was your first love of music?

I grew up in church – my parents are Christians – so the first music I ever heard was us singing ourselves. There were always people playing and singing in our house, but it wasn’t until I was 12 when I heard Depeche Mode that I had a musical “love” – something that I really, really loved. Of course I listened to singers like Whitney Houston, like all girl singers do really, but it wasn’t until I was 16 that I started to make my own songs and actually found my voice. I could’ve sounded like anyone else before that. I was quite technically good and was singing all the time, but it wasn’t until I found my own voice that I discovered that side.

So, did you never sing solo in church?

I sang solo as often as I could – I hated when the others were singing at the same time as me. I didn’t take singing lessons, because if you did then you had to sing in the choir. I wanted to sing solo. I had my first performance when I was 4, so the singing part came really early, and then as I got older I realized that I could actually write songs. Writing just started to mean so much more to me. I decided that I wanted to go deep and not sing anyone else’s songs – I just wanted to do my own thing.

Why did it mean so much to you?

Because I discovered that my voice can be something much more original, and instead of just singing the song I could live inside of the song in the music, which is a completely different sensation when you’re onstage. I can never get into a song in the same way as when I’m creating it myself, because it has to come from the heart.

What were you writing about?

It was just what I was thinking about or frustrated with at the time – quite childish, I guess, and it’s still quite childish in a way, because it’s about basic human feeling. I can’t decide what a song’s going to be about – it’s just what I really care about at the time. When you try to write, you just open up to something and you just have to roll with it. Sometimes I’m like, “I don’t want to write about this – it’s stupid!” but I know this song is going to be, because that’s what I really feel.

What were you creating your melodies on?

When I lived in my one bedroom flat when I was 16, I just had a guitar and I wrote songs on that. In the beginning, I didn’t really care about what my sound was, I just wrote with whatever I had at hand. I didn’t know everything from the beginning – I just did whatever I felt at the time and didn’t think too much about it, and I hate the sound of acoustic guitar but that’s what I had then. I felt really lucky that people liked my songs. So, I was like, “Hang on, let’s do stuff I want to listen to.” Then I started to care more about the sound, so I developed it slowly.

So, you were developing your tastes over time and figuring out what you wanted to create?

Yeah, I’m much more into rhythm and bass. When I heard Kelis’ album “Tasty,” I realised I could have so much fun with rhythms. I didn’t want to do the same thing, she’s soul and I kind of liked electronic music – so I did a lot of research to try to find my exact sound.

So many musicians say they block out other people’s music when they’re creating, but you were looking for inspiration?

Yeah, I’ll just steal from everyone and make it into my own thing! [laughs].

So, your career evolved in Norway?

Yeah, I’m Swedish but I moved to Norway when I was 20 and I’ve had my whole career in Norway. I lived in Bergen – you know, Kings of Convenience, Annie… all those guys are part of that scene.

I love a lot of Scandinavian electro, alternative bands. Why do you think there’s so much edgy music coming out of that part of the world?

Climate and nature – there’s not much to do there. You can’t go to the beach 6 months of the year, and you have a lot of time… In Bergen, it rains 250 days of the year, so the studio is the best place to be. Musicians there are hardworking and they build off each other to create a scene.

When you were in Bergen, did you have a sense of that creative intensity? Was it easy to build a network there?

Yeah, because there’s a lot of open honesty there. A lot of musicians come from Bergen. Everyone knows each other – they have open mics, they have studios in the same houses, they meet each other all the time, you can meet artists everywhere in cafe’s… But, I don’t live there now. I live in Sweden, together with Kjetil (Kjetil Nernes, lead singer of noise-rock band Årabrot) in an old church in the countryside where I’m originally from, and also part time in Norway – I split my time between the two. But, most of the time, I’m here in London. I’m everywhere!

So, you spend a lot of time in London for your music?

Yeah, I have my label here. We’re doing a lot of promotion and shoots lately. Also, I like the fact that there are so many different subcultures here, and so many different people who are into their individual thing and are very nerdy in their field. You don’t have that in Scandinavia because there aren’t enough people – there’d be one person in every genre. But here, it’s like people are into the weirdest stuff – they’re used to hearing alternative music and make references to all these different street things, all the different types of dubstep, drum and bass… so not only those genres, but the small genres within the genres. And I just love the melting pot of different cultures. Where I live in the church, it’s like only Swedish people there – they don’t know much about the world I live in, so I want to take all this experience to Sweden and try to educate them about it.

And your brother David plays with you now – how did that partnership come about?

We didn’t really know each other that well when we were growing up. He took care of me when we were really small of course, but when we got older, we didn’t really hang out much – we didn’t live in the same city so we didn’t see each other. When I lost my drummer from my old band, I called David because he is a light and sound engineer who can do a little bit of everything. I asked him, “Do you want to try? We might argue all the time, but let’s try for two weeks and see what happens.” It worked really well, so I said to him, “Let’s try for a couple of months.” He was used to deciding all sorts of stuff, so I made it clear to him from the beginning that I was the boss, and I think that’s what makes our balance really good because he knows that I have the final say. Our tastes gradually got closer – we both like a heavy sound and he listens to a lot of metal, as well as jazz and country and other stuff.

It’s cool that you found a point of overlap…

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So I get the impression that you are very comfortable thinking outside the box – have you always been creative like that?

Yes, I think I’ve always been open-minded. We moved to Japan when I was 7 years old – my mum and dad took the whole family and just moved to the other side of the world when no-one in my family had been outside Sweden before. They were just like, “Ok kids, we’re going!” It was a really brave thing to do. My sister was 1 year old when we went. She was so disappointed that she didn’t remember any of it that she moved back there, and my younger brother did as well – but after the Fukushima incident, he moved back home because he has children. We speak Japanese in my family…

Japan has a very distinctive culture. Would you ever want to go back there?

Yeah, definitely. Japan has a lot of soul. I have a really strong connection with Japan, and I understand the Japanese culture. Actually, when I went to China I was like “What?!” – Sweden and Japan are much more alike than China and Japan…

So you didn’t have much exposure to pop culture or role models when you were growing up, but how did that affect you?

I always felt that I had to lock down my personality. I felt that maybe I was a little too wild sometimes. Especially when I came home from Japan, I was completely different from anyone else and people looked at me as a very different thing. It wasn’t easy, so I just tried to blend in. I didn’t try to shout it out loud, but just tried to “be.” I didn’t know how exactly to do it – I just tried to be normal. I didn’t understand that clothes say something about you. I thought, “Can’t I just wear whatever I want? Why does everyone have to care?” In the end, I was wondering, “What makes me so different from everyone else? We don’t look that different. We aren’t that different… Well, we look different I guess…” And then I thought, “Oh! Just wear the same things as other people!” That was the result of not knowing any bands. When you grow up, there are so many fashion codes. You don’t realize they’re there, but they exist. And if you didn’t grow up with any codes, you don’t know them. I definitely didn’t know anything about that.

So, your childhood in Japan was really liberating…

In Japan, we lived almost in the jungle. We were 30 people in a missionary village, completely isolated from other people. We watched a little bit of TV, but not much. We had to find out our own things. I felt very free when I was there, running around in the woods – I felt like a beast. And then I felt completely locked in when I came home because I realized I couldn’t do what I’d been doing. I moved back to a small countryside school. So, it wasn’t about trying to lead fashion, it was just about making people think I wasn’t crazy. That’s all I wanted… people to love me. My family was encouraging, but everyone else was like, “What are you doing?” So, I had the music which saved me – that was the only positive thing. Then I moved to Stockholm when I was 15 to live alone, and that was just perfect because I could do want I wanted. It took me a long time before I realized that maybe it’s actually a good thing to be different…

Yeah, I guess it’s about building your own self-confidence, isn’t it? There’s still way too much pressure on girls and women to conform to fashion stereotypes. You mentioned that it takes a while for audiences even in London to get used to your short hair look onstage…

Yeah, it’s weird… but I don’t know if I’d have it any other way either, because it’s quite nice. I like that now…

You’ve evolved your music quite a lot over the years. Did it ever scare you to experiment and switch direction? Or were you pretty confident with that process?

Well, in 2007, I had a kind of musical identity crisis. I knew what I wanted and I knew that I didn’t want to do the thing I had done, but I didn’t quite know how to attack a new record. Then I was misdiagnosed with cancer. They called me and said that I had a really aggressive type of cancer in the uterus. I asked if I was going to survive and they said, “Uh, we don’t know what to say – can you just come in?” You’re not really supposed to tell people they have cancer on the phone. From that message, I felt I got a clear view suddenly, because all the stupid things in life like what perfume you’re going to wear kind of disappears and only the most important things are left. So, instead of being depressed about it, I started to think very clearly really fast. When I arrived at the doctor’s, it turned out that they thought it was going to develop into cancer but if I had an operation I’d be fine. So, I did that, and that was part an emotional period after being depressed for a while. So, getting that sort of thing actually just straightened me out completely, then I kind of knew: “Ok, now I know this is what I’m going to do – I’m going to work with these rhythms, I’m going to dance on stage, I want to move around, I want to be alive.” You don’t really think when you go to the doctor that that’s the way it’s going to go. It made me quite fearless I think: if I’m going to die, it’s not really a big problem, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done a lot of cool stuff, it’s not such a bad thing, my mum’s going to be sad but I’m going to be fine… So, if I ever get that message again, I know how I would react.

In terms of knowing what you want as an artist and in your life?

Yeah, I’m happy about that. I told the doctor I wrote a song about it, because they were shocked that someone told me on the phone, but I said, “It’s fine – but just don’t ever do it again.”

How are you feeling now about where you’re at, after that journey?

I feel I get to do cool stuff right now and I meet a lot of cool people who I admire who like the album. I go out into the world and get to eat these nice foods from all these different countries. It’s very exciting and I’m very grateful. I have been to the States but would like to go to Poland, Estonia, Romania… In Western media, you never really hear what’s really going on in East Europe…

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If you could talk to yourself when you were growing up, what advice would you give to yourself? Or to other young musicians now?

I just want to say to people, “Do stuff!” Instead of watching TV, there are so many things to do. Your imagination is the most important tool. I look at the world sometimes and how people live. It’s so easy to paint yourself into a little corner: “I must do this in my life…” so you can’t really don’t do anything. But, you can do everything – that’s what I think about every day. You can actually do it. Don’t be lazy, just do it.

Yeah, talking about not putting limitations on things, when I think about yesterday’s Pussy Riot concert, we prepared that in 3 weeks which seems crazy now…

I really admire that you did it. You actually did it!

Thanks to you guys, of course. I did it out of frustration – I just couldn’t bear watching my own country’s music community do nothing. We needed more action, we needed artists to stand up together and protect ethics.

If people go out there and do stuff, it’s because we need it. It’s important not to blame the men who live now, because they are also a victim of the patriarchal system. When I look at a lot of men now, there is hope, but I think the whole patriarchal system needs to be broken down a bit. Men go out and do stuff. But I think women aren’t encouraged to go out there and do stuff because they don’t have as many role models – but that’s what we need.

Yes, it’s important for women to have strong role models – whether it’s a singer, politician, mother, sister…

And, even if you don’t have a political agenda, you can do something. You have to do what you want to – do something!

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BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT

Next up in our ARTISTS SAY FREE PUSSY RIOT photo campaign is London-based Japanese band BO NINGEN AKA Taigen, Yuki, Kohei and Mon-chan. We took this shot in the beer garden late night just after they played a full set as a full band inside a tiny upstairs room of a pub in Manchester! Smallest room we have ever seen a band perform in. The room next door was the bathroom, occupied by the night’s DJs. Radical…

Continue reading BO NINGEN say FREE PUSSY RIOT