Pickly Wiggly

Pickly Wiggly takes its title from Piggly Wiggly®, the first fully self-service grocery store, founded by Clarence Saunders in 1916. By introducing open shelves and self-selection, the supermarket transformed shopping into a system organized around efficiency, circulation, and choice. This model laid the foundation for the contemporary supermarket as a highly functionalized space.

However, self-service does not necessarily imply freedom. Over time, shelves, layouts, visual languages, and technical infrastructures have evolved into precise systems that pre-structure choice. Value is sorted before products appear, and decisions are guided before consumers are aware of making them. What presents itself as abundance and convenience often conceals mechanisms of control, substitution, delay, and differentiation.

Pickly Wiggly reframes the supermarket from a site of everyday consumption into a lens through which broader social, economic, and technological structures can be critically observed.

Welcome to Pickly Wiggly, your self-service supermarket of curated choices!

Images are staged and may differ from actual in store conditions.

All selections are pre-arranged for smooth circulation.

Special offers on value and desire may be applied without notice.

Some options may be unavailable or already decided.

With the kind support of Akademievereins Münchens