Supermarket Sweep
October 3rd, 2012 By Joseph
The supermarket brings together a vast and different variety of different products and life which is prepared for human consumption in a way which has become a complex system of codes and conventions. These conventions are rarely considered by the consumer unless the delivery method is slightly changed. This is heightened by trying to purchase different products in different countries. For example, in Spain: fruit is weighted and measured by the consumer whom then organises the price tag from a ticket machine. This makes someone from a country where the convention is different to that experience the purchase in a whole new light.
Supermarket Sweep attempts to take the environment of the supermarket and push this concept one step further. Key elements that can be changed are the different products, the staff and the customers themselves. Products can be changed by turning dead produce into live produce: In the eggs section, there will be a thousand live chickens, all running around inside a fridge display cabinet. In the vegetable section the veg will be still subterranean or live on trees, potatoes in the ground and grapes still on the vine. People would have to pick what they want as if they were farming it.
The key environmental components to be explored in this study are the customers and the staff which are substituted by actors, turing the supermarket into both a playground and theatre. Staff declaring undying love for each other on the public address system and asking other customers to find colleges for them to ask them to marry them. Customers having fights, arguments and general drama in the isles. People performing magic tricks in different food sections… like turning the eggs into chickens. Trolly races being declared on the public address that will be coming down certain isles and around certain corners. Juggling acts with tins of food.
Performers will then gather at the exit and hold out contribution boxes and thanking customers for attending the show, all in an attempt to change perception of the environment from that of a supermarket to anything but a supermarket.