St Petersburg art group asks, “What do we value?”

St Petersburg art group Yav have designed a piece of street art to help passersby put things in perspective.

The group placed a “value check table” on the city’s Lensovet Street, based on the design of the Golovin–Sivtsev Table — a standardised sight test developed in 1923 by Soviet ophthalmologists Sergei Golovin and D. A. Sivtsev, and still commonly used in some post-Soviet states.

“We came up with a table that will help residents not only to identify nearsightedness, but also short-sightedness of thinking. After all, so often we care about those things that are on the surface, and so rarely think about those at the bottom of the table,” reads a statement by the artists. “We propose [...] switching these values around so that [the most important values] are visible to those who do not have the sharpest vision.”

Currently at the top of the table, in the largest typeface, are “iPhone” and “car”, with values including “friendship” and “honour” appearing further down the list in very small letters.

Source: Afisha (in Russian)