Yekaterina Samutsevich: ‘We can’t perform with superstars’

It’s cool that we entered into this scene, where lots of people see us and listen to us and, through us, learn about the situation in Russia, about sexism in Russia.

We called our first album “Kill the Sexist”. It’s a virtual media album, not a studio one – we’re against commercial forms, against music as goods. It’s our principled position to put our work only on open sources – YouTube, VKontakte – where you can listen and don’t need to buy anything.

We’ve got invitations to perform with certain musicians, but we reject legal performances. It’s a matter of principle for us to give unsanctioned, illegal performances. We can’t do something by agreement, even more so with superstars. It contradicts our struggle with commercialisation. How can we perform with a commercial star, who has been built up with the help of this industry, and perform and get support from this industry, which we were against from the beginning? It’s a total contradiction of our views and we won’t do it.

We want to continue performing. The other girls have that desire. But we can’t do anything immediately, because our security conditions have become complicated. As far as we understand, a lot of us have come to the attention of the security services and therefore can be followed and so on.

If things become really difficult, really totally impossible, then maybe we’ll turn to a new form and maybe we’ll do more educational projects. Because if you’re not allowed to perform anywhere, then maybe you can at least teach other people, so a new generation of artists grows up.

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