Productivity as an Aesthetic Object

This research project aims to investigate the variations in the representations of productivity, as they appear in Youtube compilation videos associated in titles with the word 'Fast Work', from 2013 to 2025, based on a multi-disciplinary study. These audio-visual practices are studied with and through the context of the current mode of production and its economic realities, its international division of work between immaterial/material, waged/informal working conditions, its structurally low productivity rates in the very sectors in which feature in these videos, that is to say, so-called low-skilled, precarious production or service sector jobs.

At stake within these representations lies a multimodal mediated look and earshot: individuals watching and listening to individuals work. By linking film studies, sound studies, cultural studies, online data analysis and socio-semiotic analysis, it examines these practices not as isolated objects, but as the results of an interconnection between the subjects who feature in them, those who produce them, those who edit them and those who consume them. The project investigates the manners in which the relationship at play in our source material generates contemporary representations of what work.