In 2018 Outset Germany_Switzerland acquired Melanie Gilligan's video work The Common Sense, which was then donated to a public institution.
The Common Sense, tells a story of the future technology, ‘The Patch’, a sort of prosthesis which makes it possible to directly experience the physical sensations and feelings of another person. After a decade of transforming the conditions of work and social life, for the most part in accordance with economic demands, the technology’s networks suddenly fail causing massive disorientation. People withdraw into themselves, isolating themselves in their homes, since they no longer know how to communicate with one another in a meaningful way without the aid of the technology. When the system is again ‘online’, and The Patch is functioning again, the story splits into two separate parallel storylines. In one of the storylines after the rupture society undergoes a normalization and The Patch continues as a part of daily life. In the second storyline, groups come together to try to form social movements to resist the exploitative elements of the technology. In this way Gilligan raises questions about our present relationship to technology (mobile telephones, iPads, etc.), which increasingly define shapes our minds, our bodies, and the way we live and interact within a capitalist system.
For her large scale video works, artist film-maker Melanie Gilligan, develops her academic investigation of sociopolitical issues, especially of systemic relationships between labor, economy and politics, as well as the individual’s role within this network of relationships. Produced as serialized dramas using fictional future worlds her works explore the shifting experience of everyday life in today’s economies by analyzing logical structures of contemporary capitalism.
Melanie Gilligan was born 1979 in Toronto, Canada. She currently lives in London and New York and works in a variety of media including video, performance, installation and music. She regularly contributes to publications – including Artforum, Texte zur Kunst, Mute and Grey Room – and sees critical writing as an essential part of her practice. She has had solo exhibitions at de Appel, Ams- terdam, NL (2015), Museum De Hallen, Haarlem, NL (2014), Casco, Utrecht, NL (2014), VOX Centre, Montreal, CA (2011), Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2011), and Ko?lnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, DE (2010). Upcoming and recent exhibitions include: HKW - Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, DE (2016), British Art Show 8, Leeds, UK (2015), Dojima River Biennial, Osaka, JPN (2015), Fridericianum, Kassel, DE (2015), MoMA PS1, New York, USA (2014), mumok – Museum of Modern Art, Vienna, AU (2013), and The Swiss Institute, New York, USA (2013). Melanie Gilligan completed a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and was a Fellow with the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Programme in 2004-05.
