A New Product

What does a typical workday look like for an employee of Vodafone in Düsseldorf? The corporate consultants on the Quickborner Team ponder this question, surrounded by colorful flipcharts and Post-its. At brainstorming sessions held in executive meeting rooms, they advocate for standardized open-office spaces.

Acclaimed essayist filmmaker Harun Farocki spent a year following these Hamburg-based consultants with his camera. Through simple observation, he exposes the psychology and ideology of this new management culture. Euphemisms are the norm here: the office is described as an “oyster” or as a coat that you put on, and one is expected to have a “maximum mindset.” This incomprehensible management jargon sounds almost like an absurdist theater piece.

Farocki has been interested in the organization and optimization of labor ever since his 1975 radio documentary Horst Grothus. Unternehmensberater. Forty years on, the measurement and quantification of work processes still plays a major role in A New Product. Now, management focuses not only on production, but also on the personality, social behavior, and lifestyle of employees—they have become the new product.