While we plan our working weeks, I suggest turning your attention to the new programme at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, a series of discussions and closed seminars on "New Ethics, Stigma and Inequality"

While we plan our working weeks, I suggest turning your attention to the new programme at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, a series of discussions and closed seminars on "New Ethics, Stigma and Inequality". To my mind, the most interesting thing about this thematic field is its relative novelty, at least in the Russian context, and with it the dubious expertise on the questions involved. So it is rather diverting to watch who will become the experts in new ethics, how their professionalism will be judged, what criteria will take shape and on what the authority of the speakers will rest: charisma, past merits, public recognition or some other competence? Perhaps you and I, with a certain diligence and a knack for immersing ourselves in the new terminology, might also become mediators of the institutions of new ethics? Personally, I should gladly serve as a stern censor or a capricious denier of rules. The discussions take place twice a month on Thursdays from 19:30 to 21:00, are moderated by the digital-environment researcher Oksana Moroz (Shaninka and RANEPA), and are broadcast on the museum's YouTube channel. At forthcoming meetings, with the participation of academic researchers and practitioners, they will discuss such questions as the limits of humour in 2020, post-truth and fake news, feminism in Russia, and BLM. This Thursday, 29 October, the discussion will be devoted to the image and representation of the "other".