Pussy Riot have premiered their video for new track, ‘Refugees In’. Shot at Banksy’s notorious Dismaland in Bristol by Ralf Schmerberg, the video matches the song in urgency and confusion, pelting the viewer with disturbingly surreal and frank scenes.
“After meeting with one young guy, who fled from Sudan and came to London risking his life in the back of a lorry and after we read all the news coverage about thousands of people who are dying on their way to a safe place we had no doubts that the main topic of our event should be a pro-refugee, pro-free-traveling, multiculturalist agenda,” Nadya Tolokonnikova tells Noisey in a recent interview.
Speaking of the performance at Dismaland, Tolokonnikova goes on to say, “it is a big deal for Pussy Riot—to perform first time not in the middle of Red Square, but at an official event. It’s as important as losing your virginity, and we gave ourselves to Banksy.”
When asked about recent events in Paris, Tolokonnikova responds with her take on the current movement of refugees trying to escape persecution, and the idea of closing European borders.
“If Europe closes the borders hundreds of thousands of Muslims putting on the line everything they have to escape radical Muslim state will never be able to see another world,” she says. “Some of them will join that very ISIS, being embittered and disappointed in the good will of European states. If we want to attract Middle Eastern people with our Western values there is no other way but to accept them. Accept and save those who flee the country occupied by terrorists, those who run to Europe as to some promised land.”
“The time of grief for the dead should not become a time when we betray the belief of hundreds of thousands in the humaneness of the European world. Our grief should not teach us to aim for revenge, war and hate. It should teach us to help and show real compassion to each other.”