The Paris prosecutor’s office has called for Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky to be sentenced to six months in prison and fined 50,000 euros ($54,000) for recording and broadcasting sexual images of the former politician French Benjamin Griveaux without his consent. .
At the end of the trial at the Paris Court designed by Renzo Piano, Wednesday June 28, the public prosecutor also requested that Alexandra de Taddeo, Pavlensky’s girlfriend with whom Griveaux had an extramarital affair, be sentenced to six months suspended sentence. The verdict is expected on October 11, 2023.
Pavlesnky, who was born in St. Petersburg, is known for his controversial performances which he calls “events of subject-object art”. Some works have incorporated an aspect of self-harm, such as sewing lips together, and the message is often aimed at the powers that be or politicians. Pavlensky is based in France, where he applied for asylum after escape sexual assault accuses Russia in 2017.
Pavlensky and de Taddeo were accused at the Paris trial, which Artnet News is attending, of leaking videos showing Griveaux’s genitals. Pavlensky posted footage of the politician sending intimate messages to a young woman and a video of him masturbating on his website, Pornopolitique (Pornopolitics), when Griveaux was running for mayor of Paris in 2020.
Following the controversy, Griveaux ended his campaign for mayor as the candidate of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, La République en Marche. Griveaux had served as spokesman for the government of former French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe during Macron’s first presidential term.
Griveaux was absent from the trial where he was represented by his lawyer, Richard Malka.
Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky (centre) is escorted inside a courthouse ahead of a hearing in Moscow May 18, 2016. He faces up to three years in prison for watering the door of the building of the FSB, the KGB’s successor, with gasoline and setting it on fire in November 2015 in a performance he titled “Threat.” Photo by Alexander Utkin/AFP via Getty Images
Pavlensky, 39, and de Taddeo, 32, arrived an hour late, hand in hand. Clutching her recently published book lovewhich recounts her sexual encounters, de Taddeo wore a pale silver sequined dress and Pavlensky was dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans.
While the president of the chamber states the identity of the couple, the performer proclaims: “Today will be the judgment of the eighth event of Subject-Object Art, the porno-political event; I will be judged for combining high and low style. (By this, it is believed, based on previous media reportsthat “top” referred to a portrait of a politician while “bottom” referred to genitals.) Pavlensky’s outburst and ensuing applause from supporters prompted the judge to suspend the hearing briefly.
Speaking to reporters outside the courtroom after the hearings broke, Pavlensky said: “An artist should always give an introduction. The judge started annoying me and wouldn’t let me talk. So after that, why should I talk to the judge who breaks my word? When the trial resumed, Pavlensky invoked his right to silence during the proceedings.
The artist previously spoke of Griveaux’s “political hypocrisy”, saying it prompted him to launch his Pornopolitique website which he “envisioned as the first pornographic website in the world to involve politicians or government officials. elected and appointed”. De Taddeo, student, founded an association to finance the site. She claimed to have no creative role, merely a financial and organizational role.
Pavlensky’s lawyers, Yassine Bouzrou and Anna Branellec, called several witnesses to speak in his defense. The first witness present was Jenny Dussan, lecturer in visual culture at Goldsmiths University in London. Dussan had contributed an essay to Pavlensky’s book Pornopolitics and other precedents, published in conjunction with his solo exhibition at the a/political art space in London last year. Since Dussan does not speak French (Pavlensky’s lawyers had not hired an interpreter), she was unable to testify. Instead, excerpts from the document submitted by Dussan were read aloud in court.
Two other witnesses were actors who recited passages from the 17th century satirical play Tartuffe or the impostor on the religious hypocrisy of the French playwright Molière. After Pavlensky and someone in the public gallery clapped after the first actor’s recitation, the judge ordered another break in proceedings. “Know that this is not a show but a trial,” she said.
American art historian and curator Carrie Pilto also spoke. Pilto included the work of Pavlensky, Lighting (2017), a video showing the artist to be arrested after setting fire to the facade of the Banque de France in Bastille, Paris, in the ongoing group exhibition, “Someone Gets Rich”, at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam, of which she was curator.
Russian artist Pyotr Pavlensky poses after setting fire to the gates of the headquarters of the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB, in central Moscow early on November 9, 2015. Photo by Nigina Beroeva/AFP via Getty Images
Pilto told the court that “the questioning of normative codes is one of the strengths of contemporary art” and cited Pavlensky’s views on “the puritanism and hypocrisy of politicians”. Asked by Bouzrou, one of Pavlensky’s lawyers, if the site Pornopolitique was part of the continuum of Pavlensky’s work, she replied: “Absolutely. He creates works to question the State.
Freedom of expression versus the right to privacy was at the heart of the case. Malka argued that de Taddeo and Pavlensky deprived Griveaux of his right to privacy by posting sexual images without his consent. “Politicians are also entitled to privacy,” Malka said. Earlier, Malka’s fellow lawyer alleged that there were a series of “coincidences” in how images from Taddeo’s computer “miraculously” came into Pavlensky’s possession.
In her summary, Malka told Pavlensky and Taddeo, “You are the Bonnie and Clyde of the bedroom. He accused the couple of thinking of themselves for “a quarter of an hour of fame” and Pavlensky of “pathological narcissism”. Malka said, “Art is an instrument of elevation, not a tool for sadism or reality TV.” Malka told the courtroom, “You [the public gallery] would also become the object of a work of art,” alluding to Pavlensky’s statement about subject-object art. At the end of Malka’s conclusions, Pavlensky retorted, “You’re a big jerk.”
The prosecution said there was a “clandestine nature” in the way de Taddeo recorded the images sent by Griveaux on his computer and USB key without his knowledge. He argued that their dissemination constituted a “disproportionate” use of the limits of freedom of expression and the “publication of sensationalism”.
However, de Taddeo’s lawyer claimed that taking screenshots of images had become normal to justify how the images, intended for “ephemeral” use, had become “permanent”. She said her client was unaware that Pavlensky was downloading them from his computer.
The last lawyer to speak was Bouzrou. “Everything was done to bring down Petr Pavlensky,” he said. Bouzrou argued that the leaked sex videos were “a contribution to the general interest” to Griveaux as a mayoral candidate who spoke about his family life.
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