Jasmine Guffond
Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity (2024)
public sound installation in stereo
45’ loop

Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity is a poetic inversion of muzak’s traditional role in stimulating seamless workplace productivity. Beginning as a pre-radio music distribution network in the US in 1934, muzak was transmitted along electrical wires with the aim of being at once ubiquitous and indiscernable, always present yet easily ignorable. As a pseudo-science muzak capitalised on the potential of music to have a psychological effect on listeners, and with the goal of maximum productivity, was employed as a sonic disciplinary force in the workplace.

Installed to loop endlessly at the Amazon Packing Station next to HAUNT/frontviews, the work is not meant to stimulate melodic control but rather produce a reflective space in which to consider the personal, global, and environmental benefits of slowing down. A sonic counter to the harmful effects of maximum productivity, inherent to capitalist cultures, from labour exploitation to the impacts of overproduction on the environment. Reverb, essential to the muzak aesthetic, is programed using the dimensions of Amazon’s Berlin Fulfillment Centre, DBE2. These fulfillment centres are globally iconic factories that promise the consumer utopia of next-day delivery for almost any product imaginable. Inspired by Sam Kidel’s concept of “mimetic hacking,” the reverberation characteristics of DBE2 allow a symbolic sonic break-in of the guarded Amazon fulfillment center, a trespass into the flow of production.