Week 1
Author: Yueqi Zhou
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Methods of investigating
Before the novelty of London’s supermarket culture had faded — or perhaps it was simply the experience of living alone — I spent several weeks investigating the Lidl near my apartment. Through mapping, photographing and sorting, I began to notice what was happening inside this seemingly ordinary space.
In The Street, from Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, Georges Perec describes the familiar street elements: automatic street lights, bus stops, telephone kiosks and baskets which passersby would glance at (Perec, 1997). He pays attention to things that usually remain in the background of everyday life. This reminded me of my own investigation. Shelves, products and shopping trolleys, appearing almost like randomly respawning NPCs in a game, all seemed to participate in the daily operation of Lidl. By repeatedly recording these details, I began to see the supermarket not simply as a place for shopping, but as a space with its own rhythms and systems. Yet what I could see was only the tip of the iceberg.
Perec (1997, p. 47) writes that streets, unlike buildings, belong to no one. I connected this idea to my own experience. As I wandered through the supermarket, it felt as if it belonged to me. I recorded these changes from my first-person perspective. At first, I connected Lidl’s time-limited offers to temporary museum exhibitions. As my investigation continued, however, I began to see the supermarket more like a factory. Asian Week products, such as kimchi gyozas and Japanese-style sauces, disappeared from the shelves within a day, replaced by toilet paper and kitchen rolls, before Mexican and Spanish products appeared.
In addition to recording these changes with repeated fixed-point photos and fact-based notes, I also speculated in a subjective way based on the frequency of restocking. Were the red grapefruits selling well? Did people in the neighbourhood drink more sparkling water at weekends, perhaps even for a party? These were only guesses; my photographs could not confirm them. Shannon Mattern’s discussion of interconnected systems helped me consider how small, visible traces might offer a way to approach larger, partly invisible processes, while reminding me of how much remains beyond my limited observation (Mattern, 2013). Also, Perec’s instruction not to write “etc.” encouraged me to keep recording details that might otherwise be overlooked (Perec, 1997, p. 50).
To connect a week of photographs with the relatively stable positions of 11 shelves, I attached scale-based fold-out sections to a map. Although this format brings time and space together, I will continue to explore how to make invisible processes, such as restocking and purchasing, visible without making them immediately perceptible.
Perhaps there is a rhythm to all this, like the ebb and flow of a tide. Everything seems ordered, and yet perhaps there is no single rule behind it. I feel happy simply because I was able to see.
Reference list
Perec, G. (1997) Species of spaces and other pieces. Penguin Books Ltd.
Shannon, M. (2013) ‘Infrastructural Tourism’, Places Journal, July. Available at: https://doi.org/10.22269/130701
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What Happens in Lidl
Site & initial idea
While shopping at a Lidl only a few minutes’ walk from where I live, I noticed some things that seemed quite particular to Lidl: I could see food, sauces and other products from different countries on the shelves. It was also during one of Lidl’s regular events, Asian Week. As an Asian person visiting London for the first time, I found this quite novel, because these products seemed to be given special attention.
A few days earlier, I had visited the British Museum, where the exhibitions from different countries and civilisations gave me a similar feeling. I found a similar experience again in Lidl. So I found it difficult not to think:
Why can’t we browse a supermarket like we browse a museum, or browse a museum like we browse a supermarket?
Week 1
LiDL next to the Finsbury Park bus station (Morris Pl, Finsbury Park, London N4 3JG) 
Method 1: mapping/notetaking
For investigating a site, a map is a very effective and intuitive tool. To make the drawing easier, I first recorded a video while walking through the supermarket. Based on the video, I drew an approximate map.
However, during the process of drawing, I realised that the space I occupied was too small compared with the whole supermarket. I could not clearly understand the positions and distances between the shelves only from the video, especially because of the many turns I made. These difficulties caused me to fail in my first attempt at drawing the map.
I will try to go back to the supermarket with paper and a pen to take notes and draw the space on site. I will also mark the locations of these products on the map.
left: the video I took in order to avoid spending too much time in the supermarket and to facilitate the mapping process when returning home. 
right: an approximate map of parts of Lidl. Method 2: photographing
For the food products from Asia, I photographed and processed the labels, leaving only the product names and price labels.
I tried to look for patterns in the way the products were described through the text on the labels.
Method 3: sorting?
I found that some products included the pronunciation of the local language, some products directly stated their country of origin, while for some products it was not possible to get this information from the label. However, for most of these products, it was possible to see where they came from from the product packaging itself. So I sorted the Asian-featured products in Lidl according to different classification criteria.
type 1: country / continent of origin 
type 2: local language / pronunciation 
type 3: No clear information about origin on the label feedback
1. References and further reading：
London feeds itself
Book by Jonathan Nunn
2.the site（feedback from classmate）
There are already many things happening in a supermarket. Maybe I can choose one shelf or one corner?
3.the question about “What Does Asian Mean?”
How is Thai marketed as Thai like how is Chinese marketed as Chinese?
Try to use visual communication skills to interrogate the packaging of these categories.
packaging / typography / language / imagery / people / food photography
Week 2
I chose photographing as the further developed method
I did mapping of Lidl successfully by walking in it and try to measure the length of each shelves and ways. And then I got a clear image of the supermarket, it became easily to investigate and I won’t miss in it.
However, I returned to the site and found that the temporary Asian Week display had disappeared. Food and products on Limited Offers shelves had replaced by other things.
So I changed my topic from this temporary phenomenon and focus on the new question: What make time visual in Lidl？
Time is clear in a supermarket while everything has a beginning and an ending. Things like best before and expired date appear in almost every part of the supermarket. It’s just like there’s known information showing the time-limited nature. This kind of idea is just similar with the museum which both museum and supermarket bring new but time-limited things.
So I started to take photos.
There were lots of changes happening everyday in Lidl. I recorded these frequent changes in same parts and took notes of time and date. And also, I I recorded (came across) with the traces of staffs, most of them were trolleys.
As the response of the question “How Lidl makes time visual”, I also do a series of Photoshop work based on photos I took of the expired time, use by and best before.
At first, I think there may be different fonts and different layouts for me to investigate, and maybe it’s more like graphic and communication language. But I confused with what I can do with this and what can be the outcome in the next week.
feedback
keyword: categorise / organise / annotation / anthropological
Week 3
final presetation slide
working notes
feedback
keyword: categorise / organise / annotation / anthropological
1. References and further reading：
New York Public Library (documentary）
Frederick Wiseman
Build an understanding of a place through detailed observation.
Control Order House
Edmund Clark (photographer)
As a reference for combining photographs, written information and other materials in a book.
2. Format & outcome
“Map doesn’t work because it shows us all of the information at once.”
more like “folder/book/chapters”
3. Behind The Map
Connecting my investigation to theories of consumerism and capitalism