In conversation with Francesco Spampinato

The Common Sense is a film that tells the story of an imagined future technology, “The Patch” that makes it possible to directly experience the physical sensations and feelings of another person. Gilligan will discuss the main issues portrayed in The Common Sense, and how these relate to the themes of the exhibition “Vertigo: Video Scenarios of Rapid Changes”. We are living in an age of polycrisis and The Common Sense uses television narrative to imagine “what if?” scenarios for understanding these multiple intersecting crises. The Common Sense connects crises of low wage work with gendered divisions of labour in, for instance, care work, how this relates to technological development and how technologies serve imperatives of the capitalist economy, thereby transforming society and changing the human body.

At the end of the talk, two episodes of the film The Common Sense (2014, 7' each) will be screened.

In collaboration with the Department of the Arts of the University of Bologna

Melanie Gilligan (Toronto, Canada, 1979) makes video works that reconceive television drama and documentary to investigate socio-political conditions, especially relationships between labor, economics, and politics. Gilligan has exhibited in prestigious institutions around the world.