What is fair in contemporary society, and how do people negotiate fairness when there is a lack of clarity and governmental regulation? This question urgently needs to be answered in our time of uncertainty, economic austerity, and political crisis. The answer, Margarita Kuleva and Natalia Samutina argue, can be found in the regimes of fairness devised by innovative digital creators in post-Soviet countries such as Russia. A new generation of YouTube revolutionists holds records of cultural innovation and excellence in animation, video games, and music. At the same time, existing policies of culture and creativity in Russia neglect these achievements and impose constraints on digital sectors of artistic production. With their right to be creative contested, this bright and talented group seeks alternative means of social inclusion by revising notions of profession, social contract, and solidarity.

Margarita Kuleva is a senior lecturer at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, where she is chair of the Department of Design and Contemporary Art.

Natalia Samutina is head of the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture at the Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow.

For more information, visit artsdesign.berkeley.edu.

Presented by the Berkeley Center for New Media; cosponsored by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, the Department of History of Art, and the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley.