Serbian Ballerinas Dance with Machine Guns: The Cosmic Vision of Refbatch
Serbian Ballerinas Dance with Machine Guns: The Cosmic Vision of Refbatch
by Jackie Wang
the future is absent. the present is also. the
past is disputing every second. that woman female object stopped to
exist in 1999, you can see shadow only. the fighter of removed is
representing to you its fight. which soon will not be needed as we all
will burn. i said i drown in information, like a swimmer, who is
exhausting to fight with waves in the lake or ocean-at time when a man
drowned on telaviv beach-soon I will not have any dress and any tooth,
and you will have to take my talk as it is-without any attributes
--Refbatch, corrected text from video descriptions
Night approaches in an unidentified patch of woods in
Russia. A woman in a red tank top and gaudy eye makeup stands in the
forest pointing a camera at herself as she violently lurches her head
around while ranting in a hoarse, inaudible voice. The sound of her
screams reverberates against the trees, creating an echo that is a
haunting accompaniment to the dark blue palette of the video footage.
The content of her tirade would be impenetrable if it weren’t for the
enigmatic titles and typo-laden descriptions accompanying the tens of
thousands of videos she has posted on the internet. In this particular
video, she writes of being stalked and attacked by conspirators who
persecute her for having captured footage of their illicit activities.
Intermittently, she jerks the camera away from herself, as if she is
trying to draw our attention to something in the distance, perhaps an
attacker. But there is nothing there, nothing but bare trees and a sky
that indicates the rapid onset of darkness.
Who is this woman? To me, she is known as Refbatch. Refbatch is
the internet username of Anna Matskevich, a middle-aged paranoid
schizophrenic Russian woman who compulsively posts videos on YouTube.
But Refbatch is much more than an internet personality: she is the
creator of one of the most ambitious and beautiful visual and textual
documents ever produced. In about 2 years, she has uploaded more than
10,200 videos on YouTube, often accompanied by sloppily-written English
text. The videos make up a surreal and obsessive document of one
madwoman's life in Russia: ranting at strangers in the streets, getting
into fights, wearing skimpy clothing while dancing in snowy forests,
punching the air in beautiful fields and parks, compulsively relaying
conspiratorial and paranoid accounts of news stories, getting harassed
by policemen, standing in lakes and rivers while doing slow and hypnotic
arm movements, going up and down escalators through tunnel-like
structures, and other everyday activities like using the computer.
But for Refbatch, “the everyday” is imbued with cosmic significance and
tied to a meticulously orchestrated plot to suppress her “vision.” At
the end of a lengthy diatribe that accompanies one of her videos, she
writes, “i recorded now all thsi theem instead of rerst. sleep, food
again. l am ill very stromng i have hogb level of frost -beete feet ...
hsuabnd elimiantes me.” She is drained and worn down from
sleep-deprivation and hunger; her feet are frost-bitten and she is
derided by her husband, but she writes and records videos out of a
compulsion to reveal the truth to the world. In a lucid moment
of self-insight she reflects on her “vision” and “abnormal endurance”
when she writes: “mistifying about my vision cases and anomal enduranec
not habitul for a woman while i have in reality weak health.” She
persists despite her poor health, despite the vast plot by
scientologists, the Kremlin (central Russian Government), Islamists,
YouTube, the police, the FSB (Russian secret service) and others sent to
suppress her secret knowledge and block her attempts to publicize the
incriminating evidence she has gathered through her videos. Refbatch
writes manically about the coincidences between news stories and her
life; everything from plane crashes to earthquakes to the death of
Kennedy seems profoundly connected to subtle incidences in her life. She
writes:
EVEN NOW,THROUGH SLEEPING I SHPOULD TYPE THIS-
UNDERTSANDING THAT OUR POIOSNS WE WILL NOT AWAKE TOMORROW IF I WILL NTO
SHOUT THAT I NOTIVED THE ARTICLE -OPENED BY chance,
-and undertsand its sence.
life become too hard bec of their this hunt.
half of vidoe snot sent-
I began this article by attempting to answer the question—who is Refbatch?—with
the limited and fragmentary portrait I have constructed through her
texts and videos. But there is an insurmountable divide between her and
me, an unbridgeable temporal distance between the moment the video is
captured and the moment the digitized data is rendered and made public.
To me, Refbatch is only the spectral impression of an existence whose
meaning I will never fully comprehend. I do not know Anna Matskevich. I
only know Refbatch: the digitized object, the messenger, the
blurry face of a woman whose image hangs draped over what I think must
be a solid being. With great anticipation, I try to rip the sheets off
the looming figure but find nothing underneath. She can’t be located; is
always already gone.
Refbatch eludes me; my
understanding of her is partial. Where does she get money to live? Who
is the man that occasionally appears in the videos and holds the camera?
The tidbits of information that I do know about her life are often not
offered directly, but revealed only because they are implicated in her
conspiracy in some way. While I gather that there is likely a man in her
life that shares her delusions, I only gather this because she posted a
letter with one of her videos that said:
from: Maxim Belov
Today Anna Matskevich tried to upload in "YouTube" her video
"Al-Qaeda controls my communication means" - internet connection did'nt work.
Because of this video record is not uploaded yet it could be dangerous for Anna.(…)
Your sincerely
Maxim Belov
It’s likely that Maxim Belov is Refbatch’s husband.
From the message we can gather that it’s possible that the two are
engaged in a folie à deux. The phrase, meaning “delusion for
two,” was first integrated into my lexicon when I heard the story of the
Papin sisters, who were two French maids that killed their employers
and then had sex with each other. Even though Refbatch’s husband shares
many of her “visions” and can be seen in videos imitating her movements,
Refbatch frequently refers to him with ambivalence and suspicion. She
asks herself, “but what is th erole of my husabnd - why he evry time
take participation in this resonance and in destruction of me till end.”
She often speculates that he has been drugged and made to turn against
her, to participate in the conspiratorial suppression of her insight
through violence and abuse. Rebatch also writes about being poisoned and
drugged (“as always hided ,sprayed by drugs,and threatned in the
forest”). The poisons are said to erase their “self-undertsanding,joy of
life,and so-opportunityt creat andjust to syrvive.” Refbatch often
refers to the poison or the effect of the poison as “outmind,” a term
used when one loses the mental capability to decipher the unstated
meanings found in one’s surroundings, like the ability to understand the
messages encoded in news stories.
The paradoxical nature of
Refbatch’s monumental document is that it’s totally nonsubjective, even
though it is an obsessive record of her life. Her videos and texts do
not document her interiority. She denies the ego. Her existence seems to
completely revolve around relations and exterior events. In a way,
Refbatch is possessed. The media, history, and information colonize her
entire being. She often writes of herself as if she is an object, a hollow vehicle defined solely by the singular purpose of transmitting the truth. She has stated that she—a woman female object—has not existed since 1999, making her a residual shadow that remains only to broadcast her struggle. The fighter of removed is representing to you its fight. Refbatch
is a ghost. Like a ghost, she lingers in an intermediary zone between
life and death because she has unfinished business. Her phantasmic
presence is nebulous, shadowy, lacking any solid grounding. She is only
half here. In some sense, she is pure message. Since she lacks the presence of being,
her temporality is destabilized. Time crumbles because the intrusion of
the past scrambles the forward linear trajectory. She writes that the
future and the present are absent, and declares that the past is
“disputing every second.”
Refbatch turns herself further into an object when she speaks of herself in the second person.
you did thsi?
you dance bear foot?
ypou did nto sleep and di not eat-
you tookj absue poisones scandla pof hsuabnd befor ework and insteda of sprot triasngina?
you posses vision/
you can move non stop- a out rest poiisitive smotion and money payed. you/
or me/
iof not then taker your long fuck to your pocketand hold it ther until you will not posses such features as me-
In this syntactically complex passage, Refbatch uses
second person throughout much of the text, but in the end, she performs a
sort of textual splitting of the self by introducing the first person
pronoun “me” while keeping the “you” intact. She accommodates both the
“you” and “me” in the phrase, you will not posses such features as me. But both “you” and “me” appear to refer to herself. She teeters back and forth between positions. You/ or me/;
the slashes of which may also indicate this split in perspective. It’s
as if she were controlled by an outsider, as if she were speaking from
both the interior and the exterior, looking at herself while she looks
at herself, an object apprehending an object. Linear time, the
subjective position, and logical sentence structures are all overturned
by Refbatch.
I often find myself unconsciously
thinking of Refbatch before falling asleep and it is during this
time—when my the logic undergirding my thoughts comes undone—that I feel
like I can intuitively understand Refbatch most. Every image and line
strikes me as wrenchingly tragic. Once before going to sleep I asked my
partner, “Why does she do it? Is it the unrelenting need to expose the
truth to the world?” My partner said that that was likely her
motivation, but I pressed it farther: “But then why does she post all
those videos of herself dancing in fields and forests? How are those
related to the global conspiracy?” She replied, “Because it’s a form of
expression that she feels is also persecuted.”
It makes sense. For Refbatch, bodily movement itself
is a form of testimony. She imagines that even the tai-chi-like
movements she performs—which she often refers to as morning exercise,
ballet, snow sport, training, and dance—are suppressed by the
conspirators. She writes, “my dances on snow as freedom of speech are
forbidden.” She relates an incident that she refers to as “attacked
ballet” to a news story possibly having to do with the suppression of
Buddhist practices in Malaysia. Around the time Michael Jackson died,
Refbatch posted videos titled “we dance-Michael!” and “michael found thw
way how to be young and to dance in any age-those who do not want to
dance-eliminated him fro—.” In another video, she writes about how
Serbian ballerinas dancing with machine guns were pushed out of their
space: “serbian balerinas made thero class somewher on the ban of
adriatic sea at very hot-but now there are ruins only there-for serbs
dancers.”
i am outmind to understand what tempo i am enforced to live
My obsession with Refbatch is
getting unhealthy. As I become more invested, I lose my ability to write
about her with distance. While neurotically trying to unearth more
information, I make a startling discovery. Refatch has a second YouTube
video channel under the name Refbatch1, bringing her total video count
to more than 11,623. Next, I find a Refbatch account on Yahoo Video, but
this one only has 5 videos and appears to be a desperate attempt to
continue broadcasting her video after being “censored” by YouTube. I am
trying to piece everything together, to make sense of it. It’s not
gibberish. The more I sift through the videos and text of the 11,623
posts, I realize the incredible coherence of Refbatch’s logic. I wonder,
what’s Buddhism in Malaysia got to do with her life? But then I
remember that Islam is the dominant religion there, and that Refbatch
has a paranoid suspicion that Muslims are poisoning her and blocking her
videos. I find a Myspace account belonging to Refbatch. There are
videos posted there as well. She is listed as 46 years old. Then I find 4
videos all containing the same series of letters written by “Maxim
Belov”—her husband—while she was detained in a psychiatric “prison.”
This is one of my greatest finds yet, a rare glimpse of “factual”
details relating to Refbatch’s life. He writes:
… Anna Matskevich was detained and sent to
13-th psychiatrical clinik of Moscow for political expression against
totalitarism in Russia…. I called at 9.00 a.m. to the receiption of the
clinik.… She said that today Anna Matskevich will be psychiatrically
checked and tommorow only I will get result about her future. When I
said I want to take her home soon as it is possible - she
refused,refering to their timetable. When I asked if any medicins were
used against my wife - Mrs.L.V.Mischenko insistably suggested that I
should call tommorow….By the way, there is some information that staff
of this clinik sadistically jeer at people like fascist butchers in
Hitler time.
…By low if a person has somebody of his
relatives, who are against the psychiatrical test of him - the test
can't be done. I am against from the test of my wife.…If Russian
Federation just announce open repression against her by such messuares -
I apply for political refuge from her name and myself. Rights and
freedoms,incl.expressions are persecuted in the country.…It is clear :
that when state wants to remove a dissident - there are'nt obstacles for
this.
The letter continues with an incendiary rant about
Muslim conspirators living in their backyard. If Maxim did write the
letter, it’s the most concrete evidence that their delusion is shared.
The letters are dated Jan. 3 and 4, 2010. YouTube won’t let me scroll
that far back through her videos, so I use a trick on the Google video
search engine to see if she posted any videos during those days.
Disappointment: it appears that she posted as usual during the days she
was supposedly in the hospital. Was the whole thing a farce? But I
believe that she went to a mental hospital, and I am sure Maxim must
have written the letters. I can tell because his writing is clearer and
contains less typos. I noticed that he types “didn’t” as “did’nt,” but
what if it’s her fabricating the letters? Is it possible that both of
these non-native English speakers like to use the word jeer? I
decide to try to look up the psychiatrist mentioned in the letters—Mrs.
Larisa Mishchenko. I find out that Larisa Mishchenko is a character from
an X-Men comic. I read a summary on the website Mutatis Mutandis:
A journalist by the name of Larisa fights with
her editor over his unwillingness to allow her to work on a story about
corruption in the military. The editor points to photographs on the wall
of previous editors who published controversial stories and died
because of it. Larisa doesn’t relent, insisting on writing the story and
having it published and the editor gives in…. [At] the apartment of
Larisa Mishchenko, Larisa looks out the window to see a FSB agent
standing watch over her residence….
The FSB is basically the Russian secret service. I
know this because I looked it up after encountering in several times in
Refbatch’s text. The story of the comic book character Larisa Mishchenko
is uncannily similar to Refbatch’s story. But is it just a bizarre
coincidence? Is Larisa Mishchenko actually the name of the psychiatrist
who oversaw Refbatch? Does this psychiatrist even exist? Did Refbatch
even go to the mental hospital? Should I call the phone number of the
supposed Russian doctor listed in “Maxim’s” letter? I no longer know
what is real and I look for sources outside of Rebatch’s discourse for
grounding, but emerge even more confounded. While watching Refbatch’s
video, my sense that her claims are fictitious deteriorates under my
increasingly intensified feeling that—in some sense—everything is real.
Like Refbatch, I drown in information. The
stream of input is unending, especially since it’s not unusual for
Refbatch to post around 20 videos/text commentaries a day. In my search,
everything is connected and pregnant with meaning, like the
oversaturation of meaning in Refbatch’s world. An unsettling parallel is
formed between my engagement with Refbatch, and Refbatch’s engagement
with the world. I wonder if I am getting drawn into her way of being.
My mind reels. What is the meaning of the phrase “blind send” that
repeatedly appears in Refbatch’s videos? What is the meaning of the term
“eblo?” I try to look it up. It might be an offensive word for “face”
or a slang word for “penis” in Russian. I look up the word “alkl” and
after coming up relatively fruitless, I realize that—given the closeness
of the letters “k” and “l” on the keyboard—it’s likely a typo of the
word “all.” I try to search her real name. A profile on a site called
“My Opera” shows up. Listed occupation: Dissident. I scroll
through more search results and find her name listed in dance
competition results. Is it a different Anna Matskevich? “What do you
think?” I ask my partner. She said that it actually crossed her mind
that Refbatch was once a professional dancer. It makes sense to me too:
she’s obsessed with dancing and is unusually athletic. Couldn’t this be
her?
The internet crashes. That’s why I am able to write
this instead of restlessly sifting through information. But I still have
pages and pages of text copied into word documents and hundreds of
video stills to mull over. At every turn I notice a new pattern. The
task of writing about Refbatch is totally absorbing. I began this piece
with the intention of writing a short blurb on one schizophrenic woman’s
peculiar videos, but the undertaking has spiraled out of control,
consuming me and my life completely. Through Refbatch, I try to find the
meaning of it all. I haven’t left my house all day. The more I go
through her material, the less I feel like this woman is crazy, and the more I recognize her lucidity, the profound and mind-blowing truths contained within her messages.
Covered and Shut Up
we are bea out from scandals form only open eyes-
representin melodies of ..beethoven,ect.under grad noise;
so next day
tehre is no interest and wsh just to get up from bed,
as melodies by beethoven are outbombing by abusement
of grad rockets to your side form everywhere.
I am trying to understand what motivates me to pour all this time and energy into trying to understand Refbatch. Why am I writing this? I know that—for one—there is an urgency to preserve the monumental work that Refbatch has created, and is still creating. Since this sprawling document exists on the corporate-owned website YouTube, it is extremely vulnerable. YouTube often deletes the channels of users that post an excessive number of videos, and their terms of service explicitly state, “YouTube reserves the right to decide whether Content violates these Terms of Service for reasons other than copyright infringement… YouTube may at any time, without prior notice and in its sole discretion, remove such Content and/or terminate a user's account for submitting such material in violation of these Terms of Service.” I hope that people will work toward archiving and backing up Refbatch’s videos and texts so that they are not lost forever if an administrator hastily decides to delete her channel.
There is another underlying
motivation propelling this piece. It is the desire to expand our notion
of reality, and to create space for the existence of parallel realities.
Even though on some level I may think that the “facts” of Refbatch’s
claims are “not true,” I find it problematic to dismiss her reality.
Reality is multiple. Refbatch’s reality may be just as subjectively true
as yours or mine. We depend completely upon the creation of internally
coherent logics to validate and extend our reality, but it can’t be
measured against an objective or transcendent point of reference. There
is no way to access the true reality—it doesn’t exist. People may watch Refbatch and think, who is this lunatic woman?
They may dismiss what she has to say while remaining intrigued by her
wild and insane behavior. When I try to show her videos to people, she
is often either dismissed as psychotic or exoticized for the same
reasons. But when people engage her work this way, they fail to actually
listen. They don’t meaningfully consider her messages. As I
delved deeper and deeper into Refbatch’s world, I realized that she has
created a mad language and vocabulary to articulate what I would
consider a reasonable response to delegitimization, oppression,
trivialization, and invalidation for being a woman, for having “cosmic
visions,” for existing under governments, religious institutions, and
other apparatuses of control. Rebatch is an anti-authoritarian. She has
noted that would rather die than relinquish her right “to create,to
think,to love,to fly into space.” She persists despite feeling weakened,
attacked, and demoralized, noting that she makes more than men could while being considered weaker than they are.
Even though Refbatch may develop wild fantasies to accompany her
feeling of persecution, there is nothing irrational about her feeling of
marginalization. In a strange way, her testimony reveals the true face
of the world, a world that can be cruel and unkind to madwomen that are
endowed with too much vision.
*
psychiatry women show who attacked pope-
when i will die i will follow the information anyway - but they want and everybody only wants: i must be as missing
covered and shut up
stop to shut me up by psychiatry
i do not need permission to see.
they do not allow to me to be so as i am.
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