Pussy Riot will auction a new piece of artwork entitled Drink My Blood created by found member Nadya Tolokonnikova. The artwork contains the freedom certificate, stained with Nadya’s blood, a bottle of her blood and a digitized freedom certificate set to the unreleased Pussy Riot song Anthem minted on Ethereum blockchain.
“I spilt some blood on the freedom certificate I was given upon release on Xmas eve of 2013,” Nadya Tolokonnikova said, “after spending two years behind bars. I was injured multiple times as the result of being conditioned to slave labour while serving my time in a camp – I was forced to sew police uniforms.
“I wanted to make this freedom certificate to reflect the pain every prisoner goes through. The collector quite literally will be sent a physical bottle of my blood and an NFT.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova was sentenced in 2012 to two years imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance. She was eventually sent to a Siberian penal colony, where she managed to maintain her artistic activity with her prison punk band, which she put together to tour around Siberian labour camps.
“We worked sixteen to seventeen hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m,” Nadya said in her book, Read And Riot: Pussy Riot’s Guide To Activism, published by Harper One. “We slept four hours a day. We had a day off once every month and a half. Conditions at the prison are organised in such a way that the inmates in charge of the work shifts and dorm units are the ones tasked by the wardens with crushing the will of inmates, terrorising them, and turning them into speechless slaves.”
The significance of the blood is from the injuries suffered by Nadya and other prisoners forced to sew with machines fed by blunt needles, which left tables covered with blood.
“People fall asleep at their sewing machines,” Nadya says in her book. “They sew their fingers together. They die. If a needle pierces your fingernail and slices through your finger, your mind cannot process what is happening for the first five seconds. There is no pain, nothing.
“You just do not comprehend why you cannot pull your hand out of the sewing machine. After five seconds, a wave of pain washes over you. Wow, look, your finger is stuck on the needle.
“That is why you cannot pull your hand out. It’s simple. You can sit alone, nursing your finger for five minutes but not for longer. You have to keep on sewing. You’re hardly the first person to sew through her finger. What bandages are you talking about? You’re in prison.”
The auction will run today from 7 pm EST, midnight GMT and will run for 24 hours. The bottle of blood and digital freedom certificate will be shipped to an address of choice and issued as an NFT.
A digital representation of the artists blood vial will be issued as an NFT to every individual bidder on the auction.
For legal reasons, the physical certificate will remain with Nadya as, once convicted, according to Russian law, Nadya needs to present her freedom certificate when travelling outside of Russia to confirm that she did properly serve her jail time.
The auction will be held online at the FWB Gallery at gallery.fwb.help
An NFT is a non-fungible token, a digital asset that represents a real-world object. While the public can see an NFT image, NFT allows the buyer to own the original item. Not only that, it contains built-in authentication, which serves as proof of ownership.
Cash is fungible. One pound is equal to another one pound and can be traded for goods as such. With its digital signature, an NFT, being non-fungible, cannot be exchanged for, or equal to, a second NFT.
