Installation:
– Four loudspeakers, tapes (Muzak Brussels), dimensions variable.

“Auftakt” was created in 1990 in collaboration with Fareed Armaly. Müller commissioned Muzak Brussels to produce a musical arrangement to promote sales of contemporary art. For a usage fee, they received a case of Muzak tapes, which they played during the opening of “The Köln Show” in the stairwell of the Hetzler-Galerienhaus. Müller recorded the ambiance sounds during this opening reception and mixed them into the Muzak composition. In “Auftakt,” a series of exhibitions by of a number of artists represented by Galerie Christian Nagel, this procedure was repeated: in Stuttgart at the Galerie Ralph Wernicke, in Graz at the Galerie Bleich-Rossi, and in Zurich at the gallery in Birgit Küng in Fettstrasse 7a. The tape with the functional music, augmented with background noise from the previous event, was played at the gallery openings. When the exhibition returned to Cologne, Müller and Armaly produced an edition that contained two tapes – one with the sound from the opening of the Hetzler-Galerienhaus, the other with a mix from the openings in Stuttgart, Graz, and Zurich. Aditionally there were five cyan-blue text pages of a Muzak study compiled by Müller and Armaly, outlining the typology, function, and benefits of Muzak. Two texts were devoted to the significance and historical development of architectural passages in the consumer world of department store and gallery. The panels, stabilized with mirrored backs, had previously been exhibited at Galerie Nagel.

Müller’s interest in Muzak developed while he was living in Brussels. There he encountered the display window of the company Muzak Brussels, where large tapes played day and night with panels next to them explaining the positive influence of Muzak on employee and consumer behavior. This scheme was echoed in “Nachschub / Supply,” the catalogue for “The Köln Show,” where Müller presented a study on the influence of musical stimulation on consumer behavior. Armaly composed an accompanying text on Muzak and transitional spaces. The group exhibition “The Köln Show” was a joint initiative of nine Cologne galleries and the music magazine Spex, intended to promote sales in the midst of the Cologne-hype of the early nineteen-nineties. The activity at opening receptions centered less on the exhibition spaces themselves than on the three-story stairwell, and it was here that Müller and Armaly installed a narrow white speaker to discreetly play the Muzak tapes intended to promote purchasing. Müller and Armaly’s work was both site-specific with respect to particular galleries and general with respect to the sales agenda common to all of them.

Essay by Frederik Leen available here.