Crisis in the Credit System, 2008

Crisis in the Credit System (2008) is a four-part drama about the financial crisis, written and directed by Melanie Gilligan. A major investment bank runs a brainstorming and role-playing session for its employees, asking them to come up with strategies for coping with the dangerous financial climate at that time. Role-playing their way into increasingly bizarre scenarios, they find themselves drawing disturbing conclusions about the deeper significance of the crisis and its effects beyond the world of finance. The video work was made specifically to be viewed and distributed via internet and was released in October, 2008, eerily coinciding with some of the most dramatic events of the global financial crisis.

Melanie Gilligan 1979, Toronto, Canada. Lives and works in London and New York. Melanie Gilligan completed a BA (Hons) Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2002 and was a Fellow with the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in 2004-5. Recent exhibitions include: Transmission Gallery Glasgow (2008), Franco Soffiantino Gallery, Turin (2009), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2010) and Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2010). In 2008 Gilligan released Crisis in the Credit System, a four-part fictional mini-drama about the recent financial crisis, made specifically for internet viewing and distribution, commissioned and produced by Artangel Interaction. She recently completed Self-capital (2009), a film commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts London as part of the group exhibition Talk Show. In October 2009 Gilligan was the recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Award for Artists.