photo: Martino Margheri, CCC Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze

How is political and citizenship activity represented? Rather than looking at political ideologies, institutions, groups or identities, Kimbell and Barry take the individuals and their acts a a starting point. They invite the visitor to publicly show their everyday political and citizenship activity. In Pindices you can take button badges with phrases of different acts (eg. I recycled, I said what I believe) arranged in 2m-high plastic tubes. From a distance they resemble physical bar charts. As people take the badges, the levels in the tubes vary, presenting an aggregate view of political activity.

Pindices was a collaboration with sociologist Andrew Barry (then director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process at Goldsmiths, now at Oxford University Centre for the Environment). This practice-led project sought to design means for making political activity visible, but not in the ways typically measured by polling agencies or by using the normal methods of social science.