May, 2024

Over history, natural metaphors and images have been used to represent virtues of political life, ideals of progress and, more recently, democratic principles. A series of “data sculptures”, commissioned from Milan-based Studio Folder and presented throughout the exhibition All In! Redesigning Democracy, addressed fundamental questions on the ways in which contemporary democracies came to be, how they function, and their fragility in the face of the turbulent contemporary climate—both natural and political. 

The “data sculptures” visualized and overlaid hundreds of open-source datasets. In large material displays, they eroded, sedimented, deposited, and encrusted information. It is no coincidence that the language here borrows from natural processes. On the one hand, these verbs describe processes that we are increasingly confronted with in the Anthropocene, not least due to man-made causes (and political decisions). On the other hand, they are often used to describe the current crisis in Western democracies.

Appearing both as fragments from a distant past and archetypes of the near future, the 13 pieces reflected on the role of information within democratic systems, and on the relationships between institutions and transparency. They spoke both the language of abstract images and of accurate data visualizations. And they suggested that the means through which our public life is measured and assessed—from statistics to census or surveys—need to be contextualized and interpreted in order to play a role in the public arena.

A project by Studio Folder (Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasqual, Gresi Balliu, Matteo Bettini, Lucas Geiger, Giuseppe Romagno, Giulia Tomasi). Research, Design and Assembly: Studio Folder. Printing: Grafix Milano. Manufacturing: MioCugino.