Sessions
The twelve-week teaching schedule: what happens in each session, what to prepare, and what leaves the room.
The session is where the lecture's mechanism gets tested against an actual store — the trolley wheel, the queue, the endcap — not discussed at a desk. Twelve weeks, twelve fieldwork briefs, each one sending you back into a supermarket with one more piece of the argument already in hand.
The Threshold
The automatic door doesn't open for you. It opens because a sensor decided you were a body worth processing — and that's the whole argument for the semester, delivered before you've bought anything
Week 1 · 22 February 2027
The Route
Milk is at the back. Bread is at the back. Everything you came for is at the back — and the forty metres between the door and the fridge aisle is not an accident, it is the store's whole argument
Week 2 · 1 March 2027
The Trolley
The wheel that pulls left is not broken. A trolley that tracked straight would let you leave in a straight line — this one keeps you circling, and calls the circling browsing
Week 3 · 8 March 2027
Eye Level
The shelf at a child's eye height is not for adults, and it is not an accident either — it is the store's smallest, most patient argument, repeated one metre off the ground
Week 4 · 15 March 2027
The Endcap
The endcap isn't a display. It's a détournement of your own attention, staged at the end of an aisle you were already walking down
Week 5 · 22 March 2027
The Fresh Wall
Fresh food runs around the outside wall of every supermarket you've ever been in. Walk the whole perimeter and you've already walked the whole store — that's not a coincidence, it's the layout's real argument
Week 6 · 29 March 2027
The Queue
The queue is the one part of the store nobody designed. Everything up to here was routed for you — this is where the routing runs out
Week 7 · 5 April 2027
Self-Checkout
Self-checkout didn't remove a job. It handed the job to you, unpaid, and called the demotion a convenience
Week 8 · 12 April 2027
The Sonic Floor
The music in a supermarket was never for you to enjoy. Its only job is your walking speed, and it has been doing that job the whole time you thought you were browsing in silence
Week 9 · 19 April 2027
The Loyalty Card
The loyalty card isn't a discount. It's a toll booth, and the currency it collects is a complete record of everything you have ever wanted enough to buy twice
Week 10 · 26 April 2027
The Car Park
The car park isn't part of the supermarket, and it isn't part of anywhere else either. It's the exact non-place Marc Augé was describing — before you've even reached the automatic door
Week 11 · 3 May 2027
The Exit
The receipt is the only document the store ever gives you back. Twelve weeks of argument end here, in a strip of paper that itemises everything except what just happened to you
Week 12 · 10 May 2027