Please join us for a talk with Alexis M. Lerner, PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and Visiting Scholar at the Harriman Institute. Keith Gessen, Assistant Professor, Columbia Journalism School will chair.

As the Director of Post-Soviet Graffiti, Alexis Lerner spent 2009-2017 walking the post-Soviet and post-Communist region’s alleys and underpasses, interviewing artists and activists while cataloging political, public graffiti. In Moscow, she observed a shift in the spring of 2012: political expression that was once critical, satirical, and intertextual became curated, pro-state, and notably nostalgic for Soviet symbols and the Russian military’s historic operations. The platforms for graffiti and public expression also changed from illegal scrawls and anonymous stencils on downtown bus-stops to seven-story murals adorned with governmental seals. In this talk, Lerner explores co-optation as an effective protest management tool used by hybrid states in order to demonstrate state capacity, to neutralize a non-violent protest movement, and to create a façade of political pluralism.