When VICE met Madonna…Last year Madonna spent the best part of six months touring the world. During this time she encountered many deeply unsettling scenes, both first-hand and through the world’s media: the persecution of her gay fans in Russia, the shooting of Malala, the incarceration of Pussy Riot, American audiences relative complacency. Even when Madonna was speaking her mind at her own concerts, she encountered surprisingly negative reactions. “It’s like the dial got turned up everywhere,” she explained. ”Every place became more intolerant, more dangerous, more scary, the stakes were higher, there were more padlocks on everything… I felt like the world was collapsing.”For Madonna there wasn’t a tipping point, but a series of encounters that lead the singer to conceptualizing secretprojectrevolution, a global initiative under the banner Art For Freedom, designed to further freedom of expression and protest persecution. The venture launched last night with the screening of her 17-minute, Steven Klein-directed film (which can be downloaded for free via BitTorrent here).You may well ask, what’s the point? What’s she trying to say? What product is she pushing really? But for Madonna this is a passion project, and the purpose of this short is to provoke and inspire conversation and debate. Madonna is encouraging you to express what freedom and revolution means to you in the form of video, music, poetry, and photography. These pieces can then be uploaded to artforfreedom.com, or by tagging posts #artforfreedom.Intrigued? Check out Madonna’s interview (above) with VICE’s Chief Creative Officer, Eddy Moretti, where she discusses the purpose of this project, offers extensive insight into her experiences and motivations, while revealing the formative influences that helped shape the mindset of pop's most fearless provocateur.