ODD: Artist Nails Testicles To The Ground In Front Of Tourists
A man was arrested after stripping
naked and nailing his own testicles to the ground in broad daylight and
in full view of tourists at one of the world’s most visited landmarks.
Self-styled performance artist Pyotr
Pavlensky received treatment at a clinic before being taken to a police
station following the incident, which he said was a protest against
Russia’s ‘police state’.
He shocked visitors in Moscow’s Red
Square by hammering a nail through his scrotum into cobblestones outside
Lenin’s Mausoleum, on the day Russia marked its Police Day national
holiday.
At least one person filmed Mr Pavlensky during the protest before police put a blanket on him and removed him from the floor.
In a statement posted on the
grani.ru website prior to the demonstration, Mr Pavlensky had written:
‘A naked artist, looking at his balls nailed to the Kremlin pavement, is
a metaphor for the apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of
contemporary Russian society.’
The artist has put his body on the line for previous high-profile protests.
After two members of the Pussy Riot
punk protest band were jailed for singing inside Moscow’s main cathedral
in 2011 he sewed his lips together, and he also wrapped his naked body
in barbed wire outside a government building in St Petersburg.
