Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky, stripped naked, sat on the cold cobblestones in Red Square, and nailed his testicles to them. (Ouch!)
He wanted to protest against the Kremlin’s crackdown on political rights , and came up with the idea of using his testicles as a political weapon – so to speak.
The video above – which causes most men to automatically wince – shows artist Pyotr sitting naked outside Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow, Russia, before police managed to cover him with a blanket.
RIA Novosti, the state-run news agency, said Pavlensky was taken to a police station after being treated in a central Moscow clinic for his self-inflicted damage.
The artist, who is based in Saint Petersburg, said in a statement posted on the Grani.ru website that he was trying to draw attention to Russian society developing into a ” police state.”
His demonstration was timed to coincide with the annual Police Day holiday on Sunday. This is not the first time that 29-year-old Pavlensky has resorted to dramatic methods of protest.
In the past he has sewn his lips together to demonstrate against the jailing of two female members of the Pussy Riot punk band who staged an anti-Kremlin performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011.
He was also arrested outside a Saint Petersburg government building in May for yet another protest. That time he wrapped his naked body in barbed wire.
Assuming that the authorities don’t arrest him, the mind boggles with the thought of which part of his anatomy will he decide to abuse for his next protest!
