Episode №1
in which the film participants
log onto social networks
***
Episode №2
in which the film participants measure
the coordinates of their location in time
and space and declare their presence.
– I am five years from the tragic death of my little brother and 9145 km from the group of researchers who made advances in the area of prolonging the lives of warm-blooded animals, including people.
– I am one year before the first expedition to Mars and 2000 kilometers away from my mother, who’s in another country.
– I’m 10 fingernails on the map from the destroyed monument to Lenin in Zhytomyr, Central Ukraine. And 49 years after the first artificial satellite was launched from Earth.
– I am at the siege of Leningrad in 1941, where there will be war in who knows how many years.
– I’m 7000 light years from the NGC 6611 cluster of stars, annihilated by the explosion of a Supernova. And 1000 years before its disappearance from our field our vision.
– I’m far from the stars over my head and close to the mass graves of 1937.
– I am 83 years and 5 months after the birth of my grandmother and at the point in which a change in the Russian government may one day occur.
If I hitchhike, I’m two days on the hot road away from Landscape Avenue, in Kiev. Last year it was cool there!
– 12 days from the catastrophe of the Boeing passenger jet over Ukraine and an hour long flight from my hometown – the secret air base Severomorsk – 3.
– I’m 2000 kilometers from the battle for the Donetsk Airport and 20 years before the first war in Chechnya.
– I’m 700 kilometers from the place of mass protests at Bolotnaya square. I wasn’t there on May 6th, 2012.
– 23 years after the formation of the Russian State and 4 hours from the Russian village of Zaitsevo, where I was nearly killed.
– I’m within an arm’s reach of my closest friend and at an unknown distance from the people who want to run my life.
– I am sixteen months from the death of my father, thirteen months from the approval of the anti-gay law, a million steps away from the arms of my beloved.
– Three years from the shooting of striking workers in the city of Janaozen, Kazakhstan, and 60 km from the Ford factory, which is about to shut down by its owner.
***
Episode №3
in which the film participants
again log onto social networks
and find out that nothing in the world has changed.
***
Episode №4
in which the film participants realize
that they are a part of society and responsible for it.
***
Episode №5
in which the Ear of Society first appears.
The film participants are planning to scream into this Ear,
but they realize that in order to be heard,
they have to re-tune their voices.
***
Episode №6
in which the film participants
begin to hear one another.
- My conflict is my tongue!
I think about it all the time.
It won’t allow me to live in peace,
It keeps fidgeting in my mouth,
forcing me to talk nonsense.
Sometimes, it forces its way
into the mouths of others
and speaks for them.
It gets into the ears of the enemy
and messes with his head. - Back when I didn’t have political opinions, I was more prepared for encounters with people from other circles and with contrary opinions. I wasn’t afraid to speak. Now I’m more vulnerable. You don’t know how people will react to your words
- My city doesn’t want me to feel like a human being. They recently refused to sell me clean syringes. Someone on the phone keeps listening to my conversations and they know who I have contact with. There’s no peace in my life. I don’t wish this kind of survival on anyone.
- I try to argue when I think I’m right and I have reasons on my side. It seems to me that logic should be convincing. But I’ve never convinced anyone of anything.
- Everybody loves to prove that money is freedom. Still, in my observations of wealthy people, I see the opposite. Perhaps, precisely because of this, I’m a superfluous person in this society that teaches us, ever since childhood, to live by stepping on the heads of others…
- I get in the subway and feel like an absolute minority. I’m afraid that all the passengers will hear the thoughts that are ringing in my head. I’m afraid that they will notice that I’m a sodomite and a national traitor.
- In December of 2011, it looked like everything was in our hands. Because we are many and we are all great. It looked like Putin would lose his grip and back off quickly. I was walking around decorated with pink triangles, white ribbons with rainbow beads. Everyone asked if I was scared or not. Of course not – I would say – Not at all. But now I’m scared. Fucking scared. I don’t dare to wear our symbols.
- All of my relatives have rugs in their homes, but I don’t. They say that Russian rugs are the best and they want people in neighboring countries to also cover their floors with our rugs. I dream that people will throw these rugs out. But they throw out old rugs and keep buying new ones. You can’t free them from their rugs by force.
- Because this is the way to survive. A zone of endless conflict – War of all against all. This is the national idea. Once, one of the followers of this idea, a little drunk, tried to strangle me merely because I’m a vegetarian. That’s how it goes. And you speak of solidarity.
- In general, I understand all of this. The Russians have no identity. Or, more accurately, they have something like a disguise. Don’t stand out!
- My parents always used to tell me: don’t go outside, there are enemies there.
I looked for a friend, but he also turned into an enemy. Later on, my parents became my enemies. Then I found an enemy inside myself. What can be done? Nothing. Whatever you do, it always ends up not fitting into someone’s system of coordinates and you become an object of hate, either for the masses or the liberals. - But there’s no such thing as conflict with society. There are conflicts within society. We control someone. Someone controls us. But nobody controls the situation as a whole… Soon we will devour the entire biosphere. And then it’s over. Personally, I like society and don’t want this to happen.
- Hypothetically, I’m ready to sign any papers in favor of government policy. If this will serve as a springboard forother possibilities… But, in general, I live as if I were on an island, in the midst of my friends and people who share my beliefs, and I run the risk of being understood by them. Rarely do I find myself with regular people, although I am very interested in them.
- I’m a heterosexual man with a Slavic appearance. What kind of conflict could I possibly have with society? I should dominate. Refusing to be macho is a transgression of society’s norms. They say: What is a man who stays home taking care of a baby? A housewife? A man should go to work and support his family.
- In school, for example, I didn’t understand what civil war is; I didn’t understand its cause and its meaning. Now, after talking with a friend from school, who believes the official propaganda, now I feel very well… this split in our society.
- My conflict with society is ethical, stylistic, political and generational. This conflict of mine is materialized as a frontline that divides my family.I agree, but it’s necessary to consciously engage in conflict. Since there is almost always the possibility of avoiding conflict, submitting yourself to the interests of the other. But provoking conflict is a political act and it means presenting a demand to establish your own alternative order of things. While the oppressed, whether slave, woman or colonized, aren’t conscious of their social position and don’t affirm their rights, the conflict doesn’t exist. My conflict with the State, homophobia or the Church is a coherent political decision in the struggle against oppression.
- My conflict consists in the fact that I’m a weird. And this forces the crowd out of its comfort zone and the crowd isn’t pleased. I also force people who think like me from their comfort zone, see I’m weird, and they’re also displeased.
***
Episode №7
in which the Ear of Society
begins to beat like a heart.
(Revolt-Here-We -Now)
aka Russia Kills
***
Episode №8
seek Points of No Return in history
***
- March 18, 2014
In the Kremlin, the act for the annexation of Crimea was signed, with support from the majority of the Russian people.
- October of 2012
The Trial of Pussy Riot
It demonstrated how criminal justice in Russia has been definitively transformed into a tool for repression which provides free labor for the penal colonies.
November 15, 2011
The Dispersal of Occupy in New York City
After the violent dispersal of the Occupy Wall Street it became clear to me that direct democracy and peaceful protests are doomed to fail.
September 11, 2001
Attack on the World Trade Center
On that day, when the Muslim world responded to violence with violence, it was clear that this war was going to last a long time and that its victims wouldn’t just be soldiers.
The American army begins its invasion of Iraq, 2003 The operations of ground troops in Iraq began on the morning of March 20, 2003. In Russia, terrorist actions and the war in Chechnya continued. That year, I got married and my daughter was born.
May 6, 2012 The March of Millions in Moscow. On the day of the planned demonstrations, the police detachments were in our path and blocked the march. A pack of beasts in uniforms broke my head open and nearly crippled me. On that day, I understood what the State is.
- January, 2014 During the Olympics in Sochi, Cossacks whipped the fragile and defenseless girls of Pussy Riot. In the 19th century, governor generals were shot for such acts, but now, in the 21st century, Russian society understands and accepts them.
March 4, 2012 It was the day of the presidential election in Russia. Putin was once again in power. Many of us hoped there would be another wave of protests. But, the next day, there were only hundreds of us at Saint Isaac’s square. The special police forces made us scatter like cockroaches. Those slow to escape or hide were taken away in the police vans.
October, 2002 The terrorist act at the Nord-Ost Theater. People were killed. Then fear emerged along with aggressiveness. Afterward came distrust, strengthened by warped facts and unreliable information. Last spring, I was rehearsing inside this same building and I saw the names of all the people who were killed there.
1991 On my birthday, everything was upside down. I was born in the year that the USSR collapsed.
October 4, 1993 The shelling of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation.
After this incident, the concentration of power in the hands of one man became inevitable…
July of 2014 (MH17) When the catastrophe of the Boeing passenger Jet over Ukraine took place, I was at the end of my eleventh work day. With no time off. Each shift was 12 hours long. Two days earlier, there had been a tragedy in the subway. And before the tragedy, Novodvorskaya had passed away. I work with fluxes of information. And I react to tragic news with lots of pain. But the Boing really got to me. I knew that if I shed a single tear,I’d fucking lose it. The only way was to shut off my emotions completely. And I was able to do this.
October 27, 2012 The first congress of the opposition’s coordinating council. It became clear that reason would not be victorious in the near future.. We haven’t grown enough for this. I’ve become a pessimist and a russophobe. And I started to argue about politics, despite the despair.
1999 Bombings in Yugoslavia.
Before this, the majority were gung-ho for the liberals, and voted with their hearts, then everyone turned gung-ho patriots. A conservative turn… We felt bad for the Serbs. But I didn’t understand why, in unison with the general hysteria, I should hate the Albanians, whom I’d never even heard of until just days before. And for the first time, I felt like a traitor to the nation.
- The massacre of Armenians in Baku.
There I was Russian, here I’m a wog. There I was strong, here I’ve become weak. There, I used to climb trees and my feet were firm. Here there weren’t any good trees for climbing. And here I set foot on ice for the first time.
***
Episode №9
in which a sublime
Union of the Excluded is formed,
but one of its members
disrupts the harmony.
I feel good with you. But I can’t be happy, knowing that outside there are
people who suffer from injustice and perish in war. To talk with society, it’s necessary to go to the people. This is why I go out to protest alone.
***
Episode №10
in which the participants seek
unlucky heroes in history.
They want to test their idea
that defeat has the power to turn into victory,
and they build a monument to their heroes.
Antônio Gramsci
Is it possible to write a book in prison which your jailers won’t understand, but your followers on the outside will? Antonio Gramsci managed to do it. And now he’s one of the most marxist quoted authors ever. He formulated the concept of hegemony. In his opinion, those in power do not only use direct violence to oppress the people but art as well. This is why we need the new culture, Antonio Gramsci wrote about in his “Prison Notebooks.”
Ippolit Mychkin
An eminent revolutionary of his time, organizer of the “To the People” movement creator of an important printing press, he nearly succeeded in freeing Chernyshevsky from exile; his speeches in court exploded the public consciousness. He gave his life to provide relief in the lives of his incarcerated comrades. He was completely forgotten by the Soviet Union. And if someone were to ask a cultured person about Myshkin today, he or she would answer: Myshkin? Oh yeah… The idiot!
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up the king was not a catastrophic failure. But the fact the he accidentally became the symbol of the protest movement was his main failure. Just like the protest itself. There is nothing we can say if we can’t differentiate between reactionary terror and the struggle for freedom, transforming everything in one senseless and ruthless revolt (as Pushkin said).
Those imprisoned on May, 6 2012
These people didn’t do anything special. They simply, like the rest of us, went to Bolotnaya Square to participate in the demonstration that was scheduled for May, 6 2012. Now some are in penal colonies, other in cells, being investigated. Random victims of the regime. Unlucky. Heroes. Anyone of us could be in their place. I could be in their place.
Aaron H. Swartz
My hero – is the internet activist Ааrоn Swartz. He fought for the repeal of copyright laws and the free spread of knowledge on the internet. He exposed dishonest politicians and oligarchs. He would have been sentenced to 30 years in prison, but, on January 11, 2013, Aaron committed suicide. He was 26. I’m positive that one day the World Electronic Library will be named after Aaron Swartz.
Ulrike Meinhof
The world shouldn’t forget Ulrike Meinhof. I consider her a tragic heroine. She became disillusioned with the possibilities of education and thus turned to weapons. Entering the militant underground, this beautiful young woman gave up everything – her children, a cozy life and a brilliant career as a European intellectual. Her death was a question of time and, in mockery of the government, took place on the date that Nazi Germany was defeated. I sympathize with this woman because she never got the chance to experience the wonders of requited love; and as for her friends – they betrayed her.
Andrei Dmítrievitch Sákharov.
Human. Scientist. Physicist. Human rights activist – dissident. An elevated sense of justice and peace. An absence of fear to speak the truth. A man who took a stand against any cult of personality.But in favor of individuality and liberty. He protested against the invasion of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and was later sent into exile. He talked about three important things: peace, progress and human rights, which are interconnected and cannot be achieved separately. It seems so simple and logical to me…
- What do you see in the unlucky hero, aside from an attempt to justify his own situation? What is it that you admire? Selflessness? Christian sacrifice? No… you need a happy ending and posthumous fame. Do you know who the true hero is? The unknown one. No, not the unknown soldier, the one they build monuments for all over the world. But the unknown man and woman for whom no monuments were built, no eulogies were written, of whom not a kilobyte remains in people’s memory; those for whom no one is even capable of speaking. Those who generously fertilized the earth with their bodies, who didn’t lay down their bones, so people would build monuments over them.
***
Episode №11
in which Anya returns
from her solo picketing.
Who beat her up?
***
Episode №12
in which the Ear of Society
is unmasked
- I think it was my father’s colleague, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He hates Russophobes. It just came to me.
- It was the guy who lives in the apartment next door, a cop. He was yelling on the other side of the wall that soon our troops are going to invade the Baltics with tanks, reestablish the USSR and the yanks will piss themselves. He hits everyone who doesn’t agree with him. Out of habit.
- I think a professor at the university where I studied might have done it. He always liked to violently repress any kind of initiative. Seems like he asserted himself once again at the expense of someone weaker than him.
- They told me it was some guys with runic signs on their clothes. I got beat up by them myself a month ago, in broad daylight.
- It was an acquaintance of mine, a student at the Academy of Arts. He’s a Russian patriot.
- It was definitely a guy I know, a fashion historian, he just got back from Yalta and considers solitary protest to be unladylike.
- I know, it was a street sweeper. Every morning, he works in the square where she was picketing. I heard that two weeks ago he got a bonus from the bosses for clearing everything inappropriate he found in his path.
- Оh! It happened there! I know who did it. It was a famous artist. At that exact moment and in that place, she was in the middle of her artistic performance for a large international contemporary art exhibition. So she ran into Ánia. I know this artist and I read her manifesto. It reminded me of the Futurist Manifesto of Marinetti, who became a favorite of Mussolini.
- I’m positive it was the kids from the neighborhood, they took her cell phone. They were waiting for her just inside the front door of our building
- I think the activist was beaten by her own parents. “Who should teach children, if not their parents.”
- It seems like it was someone I know, a guy who fights against infill construction. He says it’s better to send letters to bureaucrats than going to the streets with signs. No need to muddy the waters! Otherwise we’ll just go back to the 1990s, there will be no stability and they’ll start beating people up in the streets again! That’s why he beat her.
- It was my great-grandmother. Day and night she’s in front of the idiot box and she hates foreigners with a passion Yanks, Ukies, and the fifth column.
- My aunt thinks that the activist hit herself. These hysterical feminists and shrill liberal girls are capable of any provocation to promote themselves, anything to get political asylum abroad and high-tail it out of here.
- In general, after “Crimea is ours,” half of my facebook friends are capable of doing it.
