Design Context: Message & Delivery: Research

We were tasked with buying a newspaper and selecting an article out from it that we were then too research into and collate together a visual body of work in research and the theme or issue at hand.

I choose the following article about the Pussy Riot, two of them have been sentenced for two years into Russian labour camps(the rest have fled and one was freed), for their protest inside of a cathedral against Vladimir Putin.

Feminism in Russia
"All the defendants talked about being feminists and said that is allowed in the Russian Orthodox church," said Yelena Pavlova, a lawyer for several of the nine victims who claimed they were insulted by Pussy Riot's performance. "This does not correspond with reality. Feminism is a mortal sin," she said.

The music video that got them arrested.

"The conditions in Russian penal colonies are considered a vast improvement over the Soviet-era Gulag system, the massive network of forced labor camps run by Stalinist secret police, which exposed inmates to crushing physical work, starvation, and bitter cold.

Inmates now work a regulated eight hours, and usually at non-physical labor, like sewing. They receive a small salary for their work, with which they can buy food, cigarettes, and toiletries. Food and sanitary conditions are theoretically regulated by the state. But former prisoners and rights activists say that inmates are still subjected to unhealthy conditions, a complete absence of privacy, and a brutal social hierarchy in which younger or more vulnerable convicts are subject to harassment, abuse, and even rape by prison guards or other inmates."

Back to the Gulag

Art and Protests