Supermarket Counter
- Thomas Allen
- Mar 7, 2023
- 3 min read
We may be more likely, nowadays, to find ourselves tussling with a fellow shopper for the last pack of tomatoes on the shelf (at the time of writing, there’s a shortage in UK supermarkets), than competing with squirrels for a crop of nuts ripening on a hazel tree, but not much has really changed. At least, there are some intriguing parallels to be drawn between contemporary consumer behaviour and traditional foraging practices, and Nectar Tally (pictured below) is part of a growing body of works exploring this.
Doctrine of Signatures
One such tradition, famously advocated in Renaissance Europe by 16th Century Swiss physician Paracelsus, was the Doctrine of Signatures. It held that, by God’s design, each plant’s internal ‘virtues’ – its medicinal merits – were inscribed on its outward form. Plants bore a divine signature to be read by humans – specifically, the pious ones. So it was that heart-shaped leaves, for example, indicated a plant’s efficacy in treating cardiac complaints. To understand why a plant takes the form it does, and what this might indicate about its medicinal properties, the naturalist had to ‘eavesdrop’ on the plant’s inner mechanism†.
Thomas Allen, Nectar Tally, 127x150cm, sanguine on paper
Today, the domesticated ‘forager’ can be found rambling along supermarket aisles sifting through rows of products. And they, like their wilder ancestors, have their eyes peeled for visual clues about hidden truths – hidden not inside leaves and fruits, any longer, but inside packaging on shelves. What is it that assures them of the quality of the ground coffee inside a foil bag? A colourful printed pattern, perhaps? Or a seal of approval, some cursive script, maybe even a picture of a coffee plant?
Whatever it might be, the shopper’s eye is not the only one straining to pierce the veil of appearances, though. Gazing back at the shopper through the lens of the loyalty card, the supermarket calculates their motives – eavesdrops on their internal mechanism – with a mind to manipulate and prompt future purchases.
Keeping a tally
The thousands of staccato dashes of which Nectar Tally is composed are a conspicuous record of so many moments spent in the act of its creation, and they accrete into an image that portrays – or betrays – something of my own internal landscape. This seems a nice metaphor for the way the loyalty card scheme keeps a long tally of the shopper’s impulsive moments, counted in purchases, to build a picture of their heart’s desires.
Nectar Tally (detail)
Despite being of rather insidious conception though (albeit something in which shoppers, I believe, participate quite consciously), the loyalty card scheme could have an unexpected benevolent use. At the time of making Nectar Tally, Imperial College London published a study suggesting loyalty card data on medicines bought over the counter could help spot ovarian cancer cases sooner‡. Women suffering early symptoms of the disease tend to buy more pain and indigestion medication, and this change in purchases could be seen eight months before diagnosis. Given that survival rates significantly increase if the cancer is caught early, tracking shopping habits could prove to be an effective tool for saving lives.
We have an interesting twist, then: whereas it was once a Christian’s religious devotion that could unlock the health-giving powers held within herbs, it is now the consumer’s loyalty to a supermarket that holds the promise of wellbeing.
Nectar Tally (detail)
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References
† Pagel, W. ‘Paracelsus. An Introduction To Philosophical Medicine In The Era Of The Renaissance’, Basel/New York: S. Karger; 1958 (link)
‡ Brewer H., Hirst Y., Chadeau-Hyam M., Johnson E., Sundar S., Flanagan J. ‘Association Between Purchase of Over-the-Counter Medications and Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis in the Cancer Loyalty Card Study (CLOCS): Observational Case-Control Study’, JMIR Public Health Surveill, 9, 2023 (link)
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