The Dating Market

2000-2007

Public intervention | Video | Installation | Photographs

Single?

Looking for someone special?

No time to meet new people?

Grab your chance to meet someone while you're shopping!

Pick yourself a flower basket,

and make it clear that a date is on your grocery list!

The Dating Market - coming soon to a supermarket near you!

For many hard working young professionals a visit to the local supermarket after work is the latest spin on a singles bar. While shopping for their half liter of milk, and single-serving meals, it’s become one of the few opportunities to meet new people.

In 2000 artist Otto Berchem, in collaboration with Ellen de Bruijne Projects, set the Amsterdam singles scene alight with his sociable intervention, the Dating Market, a project that recognizes, addresses, and facilitates the phenomenon of ‘supermarket love’.

When entering the supermarket, a customer can opt for a yellow shopping basket adorned with a flower motif, and label him or herself - as ‘available’. Thus the supermarket becomes a ‘Dating Market’, a 3-D classified ad.

After the initial success of the Dating Market, the franchise has been expanded to several locations in Europe (Basel, CH and Falkenberg, SE), Gwangju, South Korea., and just recently in all 10 of the franchises of RIMI supermarkets in Vilnius, Lithuania.