Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity
Zabriske Bookshop, Berlin 2021, Woolahra Gallery, Sydney / Gadigal Land 2023
Sound installation and reading as part of Books for Earworms curated by Felicity Mangan at Zabriske Bookshop, Berlin, 7th October, 2021.
Inspired by food and wine pairing, composers were asked to select or ‘pair’ themselves with a book from Zabriske bookshop. I chose David Graeber's Debt, the First 5000 Years and composed a Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity which played in the background and while I read excerpts from Graeber's book. Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity is a poetic inversion of Muzak's traditional role in stimulating seemless productivity in the workplace and pays hommage to Graeber's praise for the "unindustrious poor".
