Artist Set Bank On Fire As Performance, Has Jail Term Cut Short

An exiled Russian artist who was jailed for setting fire to the façade of a bank in Paris had his sentence cut short. The entire performance by Pyotr Pavlensky on Oct. 16, 2017, was filmed and circulated on social media.

One of the buildings of Banque de France, the central bank of France, was set on fire by Pavlensky and he was subsequently charged with arson, for which he received a sentence of a one-year jail term and a two-year suspended sentence. He was in prison for eleven months before being released in September.

On Monday, Pavlensky was detained and taken to a psychiatric unit but was later moved to a pre-trial detention center based on a judge’s order. In an interview Wednesday, before an appearance in court, he predicted he would not be sentenced to prison again. He said, “I don’t know, but I think I will remain at liberty. They released me before [from pretrial custody]. If they wanted to hold me in prison, I don’t think they would have released me so that I could spend a few months calmly walking around Paris.”

He appeared in court with his wife Oksana Shalygina, and they were both charged for causing property damage that endangered the lives of others. He was ordered to pay 21,678 euros ($25,000) in damages to the bank, to which he said, in Russian, “Never!”

Despite protests from prosecutors, the court turned away the request of jailing him and instead letting him walk free. He was ordered, however, to report to French police from time to time.

He claimed to have set the Banque de France on fire as it remains a symbol of occupation for France and a symbol for suppression of all revolutionary beginnings. This was similar to yet another performance he had in Russia in 2015 where he set fire to a door of the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service. For that, he spent six months in pretrial detention, and was convicted and fined $8,000.

Pavlensky is a performance artist known for his stunts and his 2017 performance went viral, when he made a video of standing in front of Banque de France in Paris as it went up in flames. He release in September came after he repeatedly went on hunger strikes and claimed harassment.

Pavlensky left Russia in December 2016 after a case of rape was filed against him. He did not admit to the crime, calling the case “denunciation.” France provided him with political asylum.

This wasn’t the first time he was in the news for his performance art. In the past, he has sown his lips shut, wrapped himself in barbed wire, nailed his scrotum to the Red Square in Moscow and even chopped off a part of his ear.

Pavlensky claimed he would be sentenced to 10 years in a prison camp if he returned to Russia.