Gessnerallee
Zürich

Last summer, when the punk activists from «Pussy Riot» were condemned to two years of penal camp for an unannounced concert in the Moscow Cathedral of Christ the Saviour there were protest movements around the world. This was only the end of a 10-year old sequence of show trials against artists and dissidents with which the Putin administration searches to impede any democratic change. The project «Die Moskauer Prozesse» tries to shake up the rigid Russian conditions – with the means of political theatre. Between March 1st and 3rd 2013 there will be an installation of a tribunal in the Moscow Sacharow Centre, and in a three day trial the protagonists of the Russian culture war face each other. There will be no actors on stage, only people from real life: artists, politicians, church leaders, real lawyers and one real judge. Six Moscow citizens form a court of lay assessors and will give the final verdict: for or against democracy, for or against the autonomy of art.