Albert Heijn is a Dutch supermarket chain. The first time I got in contact with it was when I moved to Rotterdam. I was staying at a friend's house, desperately trying to find an affordable place to move in. After numerous tiring visits to crammed, depressive shared houses, I finally found a suitable one. So I decided to celebrate and also to thank her by buying a bottle of Prosecco. Following my friend's verbal directions, I turned right, then right again, passed the roundabout and finally found it. I remember being stuck in front of the main entrance for what felt like ages, because my brain could not reach a consensus with its visual identity. I simply did not know that logo at all.

This was the starting point of my fascination with the Albert Heijn's logo and the supermarket in general. I went from rethinking it through my body to making my own version of it, to relocating a shop, taking on the role of an AH employee and so on. You can see some documentation of it all below.  

                                               

Deconstruction

Reconstruction 1

Reconstruction 2

Logos as beads for a string

 I took some photos of the interventions in the supermarket with my phone. I don't have too many as I was trying not to attract attention.

Presentation of the interventions

There's a new shop in town

   exhibition view

Circle the correct answer.

I went to the shop and while waiting to pay at the counter I asked the cashier if I could talk to Mr. Albert Heijn. She:

a) asked me to repeat the question;

b) replied that Mr. Albert Heijn doesn't exist;

c) looked at me as if I was crazy;

d) ignored the question and asked me to pay for my products;

e) started laughing;

f) called the security;

g) recommended to speak with the manager

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER also referred to as SAY it STRAIGHT, SIMPLE and with a SMILE

It all started on a regular evening just like this one. I was about to do my late‐night snack shopping in Albert Heijn, which happens to be right across the street from where I

spend most of my time.

(About a year and a half ago, when I first moved to the Netherlands, I didn’t have the same comfortable familiarity in pronouncing the name of the Dutch supermarket chain, since at that time it wasn’t at all the referential container for my ever‐expanding collection of memory‐stills as it is now. This process of attaching subjective meaning to an otherwise common male name happened gradually, in conscious and unconscious stages from which I can only isolate the beginning: I was staying at Mika’s house in West Rotterdam, trying to find an affordable place for myself. I had spent several days in the back seat of a white Mercedes van belonging to Mr. V, the most renowned owner of crammed, shattered shared student houses. I occasionally glanced at the perforated, stackable plastic box on the left side of my feet, which was overflowing with hundreds of keys and their multicolored plastic key chains. After several visits to similar places, each of which unveiled spare rooms through the same ceremonial climb up a curvy suite of narrow stairs, I finally found a temporarily good‐enough one that imposed itself above the other choices because the regular climb became a descent to a semi‐basement. Zaagmolenstraat 145B, read the freshly‐transferred‐from‐plastic‐box‐to‐hand keychain. I decided to celebrate this victorious ending of the hunting‐for‐a‐house journey with a bottle of Prosecco—Mika really loves it and I do not mind it either. Following my friend’s verbal and gestural directions, I turned right as I got out of her house, then right again, passed the old church and the roundabout and directed my gaze to the approaching corner on the right—the supermarket was supposed to be there. As my eyes were applying a trustworthy vertical and horizontal scanning technique that has never failed me before, I began to doubt my solid confidence in having followed the indications correctly. I turned around 360 degrees, recalled our conversation, remapped the whole trajectory and ended up asking a random passer‐by. He confirmed I was in the exact place and pointed to the entrance—it was just a couple of meters ahead. Confused, I looked again at the wide windows covered with self‐adhesive photos of product offers—in themselves a very blunt reference to a food store—and realized that my visual perception had been temporarily sidelined by an absolute lack of mental identification and translation of the company’s logo; not belonging to my habitual visual vocabulary, it got ignored. Still troubled by this surprising moment of referential paralysis, I relied on my body’s knowledge to counterbalance the situation and find its way to the Prosecco shelf. Holding a bottle in each hand, I went to the counter but was not allowed to buy them: the shop requires a valid ID proving you are older than 25. Since I did not have anything with me except for some cash, I ended up buying a normally‐sized Albert Heijn plastic bag that I carried empty back to my friend’s house in an improvised street‐choreography in which my right wrist imprinted the plastic bag equally‐paced circular moves. I spent most part of that evening drinking rooibos tea and tracing with my fingertips and eyeballs the soft and pliable version of the logo in the same way kids do when they learn the alphabet following the Montessori technique.)

Lately, due to my growing interest in old photo‐albums of Rotterdam, going for a shopping trip among the smartly designed product displays started to feel very much akin to paying a visit to a local library. I begin by acknowledging myself in the surveillance monitor, check the wallet to make sure I have the customer card with me, pass through the automatic sliding doors, pick a basket that satisfies my pre‐estimated needs or desires, and agree to enter a smartly lit micro‐world divided in categories and sub‐categories, each of them filled with carefully wrapped products such as the perfectly ripened avocados, easy to spot due to the ready‐to‐eat tag and the golden‐

molded packaging. I have dedicated so much of my spare time to this back and forth demonstration of walking, stopping, mapping and grabbing rhythm that there is no doubt I could do the whole trajectory with my eyes closed or even backwards, similar to an experienced taxi driver who knows the whole road infrastructure of the city by heart. Recently I began wondering whether this sterile environment where the stained floor gets instantly cleaned, the out of stock immediately refilled, has become a sort of therapeutical second home, a comfortable place where not much changes, providing me with a temporary sensation of belonging, stability and familiarity. The same musical playlist, the same episodic scent. Besides, even I surprise myself reacting to a product rearrangement in the same manner as when, during house cleaning time, the kitchen bin gets briefly moved to another spot but I unintentionally go to its initial place to throw away the litter. From time to time, whenever I have enough money and openness to push the limits and try something new, I start comparing proximal choices by reading the blurb on the back of the products. Anything will do, from whole‐grain cereals to milk cartons, chocolate bars and crisps bags to cleansing products. I mostly do it with wine bottles; they offer a wide range of extremely imaginative and quite often amusing blends of miniature myths and commercial storytelling.

It might have been the late hour or maybe the small number of random buyers that made room for my desire to stroll along the shopping maze for longer than usual. Somewhere between the pastry and the dairy section, I decided to disrupt the normal conversational flow of good evening‐good evening‐bonus card?‐yes‐cash or pin?‐pin‐ bag?‐no‐do you want to keep the receipt‐no with a personal, adrenaline busting addition. As I was standing in the queue and the products were rapidly disappearing from the express lane, my heart was beating faster than the barcode scanner. Once the overly rehearsed script had been reeled off, I casually added “Excuse me, do you think I could talk with Mr. Heijn?” ”With whom?” the cashier carelessly replied. “With Mr. Albert Heijn, the owner of the shop. I couldn’t find his office hours anywhere”. I think I was expecting something between a humorous response, a confused look, or total blank. To my surprise, Silvana (her name tag said), looked straight into my eyes and, with gentle emphasis on all the words in the sentence, thoughtfully added “Mister Albert Heijn is as real as the receipt you didn’t take.” Then she slowly moved her gaze toward the next customer and greeted him with the beginning line of the usual minimal‐talk‐for‐maximum‐satisfaction convention.

[see continuation in the Immaterial Institute for Receipt Research and Experimentation ]