Long before Marc Augè coined the term “non-places”, English writer Aldous Huxley had described the advent of a New World (Brave New World, 1932) in which all human beings, concocted in and born from test-tubes, would be living in a society of Eternal Present, inhabiting aseptic places with no specific feature and therefore familiar and reassuring. (Alessandra Galasso, Continental Encore, Grenoble: Magasin-CNAC 1997)
Invited to realize an installation specifically conceived for the Magasin’s cafeteria, Italian artist and designer Mario Milizia created Continental Encore, an environment soundtrack featuring a 7-hour program of “wallpaper music” corresponding to the time length of the Magasin’s opening hours. Milizia used International Style “background music” depurated of any peculiar geographical and time reference, equalized with no peaks, arranged explicitly for hotels, shopping malls, and other “non-places”. This music genre is also named “functional music”, perhaps because researchers in the US and Japan have demonstrated that working with music improves people’s mood, concentration, and, eventually, productivity. Continental Encore also included manipulated soundtracks with deforming effects such as Stayin’ Alive (1996), the Bee Gee’s signature song repeated for 70 minutes, Magma (1996), all 83 CDs of the artist’s collection recorded while pressing the “skip” button, and Hechoes (1997), David Bowie’s Heroes resounding in echoes for 22 minutes.
The cafeteria was entirely covered with wood-like wallpaper, which, according to the artist, was meant to evoke the 1960s living rooms of his childhood, the inside of o pub, and the entrance of a Sheraton Hotel.
