Crowds is an episodic fiction narrative with documentary elements which looks at low-wage service work and living conditions in Orlando, Florida. The story focuses on, Irene, and her life working in low-wage temporary jobs. The film begins with tourists arriving at the airport, having their pictures taken, cars driving on the highway, announcing that the video work will put the city of Orlando and its entertainment and hospitality economy at the center of its narrative. Crowds centers around Irene’s story, yet throughout one sees how her story takes the shape it does because of Orlando's social and labour environment. The narrative is continually immersed in Orlando living conditions, whether through the city landscape or by learning about conditions in interviews with low-wage workers throughout the film. Orlando’s labour economy has the lowest wages of America’s 50 largest metro areas, and it is the only metro area in the country where one out of every four jobs pays $11.08 an hour or less. Orlando’s history of racial segregation and present continuation of systemic racism in many social systems produces Orlando’s racialized labour conditions. At one point, Irene joins a protest in Tallahassee opposing a new law that would require police to carry out federal immigration (ICE) enforcement requests, making undocumented workers more vulnerable to deportation. Through focusing on space in a city only negotiable by car and labour in a tourist economy intensely pressured toward maximal profit, Crowds thematizes economic, social and spatial conditions that make the city unlivable.

2019

INSTALLATION IMAGES

Melanie Gilligan, Crowds, 2019, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Max Mayer, Düsseldorf.

VIDEO STILLS

EPISODES

Episode 01
Irene loses her job waitressing at Denny’s on a popular Orlando tourist strip. Deflated she leaves Denny’s and checks online regarding an event she has heard about called Service Week, a public-private festival of temporary service work that has exploded from being a week-long to lasting several months as the result of the rapid expansion of Orlando’s perilously low-wage economy. Irene wakes up the next morning and as she does, she reflects on a discussion she had with Bryant, who is a part of the labour union Unite Here, about wanting time away from work. She receives an eviction notice, and upset, she rushes out of the house. Irene has taken on several temporary jobs being offered in Service Week. During Irene’s first day’s work in this new situation, she is employed to hand out flyers in the city center. While working, she thinks about an interview she did with Jose, also from Unite Here, about temporary work and how employers use this to get around giving workers any benefits. She goes home and makes dinner, reflecting on a discussion she had with Esther, who is part of Unite Here about how Esther feels about her time at work.

Episode 02
Irene travels across town to buy groceries for a customer and on the way, she stops into a car dealership to contemplate buying a car. A discussion with Carmen about the incentive to buy a car in Orlando comes to Irene’s mind and so does a conversation with Karen about the difficulties of buying groceries on low wages. After she is done her grocery shopping job, she takes a long journey on the bus to her next job as a housekeeper and ends up very tired. She recalls that she Carmen had talked about the difficulties of housekeeping work. At the end of her day, Irene visits the house where she has left her cat Mitzy, having arranged to visit Mitzy regularly, including this evening. Unfortunately, she does not catch the owners in time and so she waits, hoping they will come back. While Irene waits, she narrates a story to herself about finding a perfect home but how the stability of home ownership is elusive.

Episode 03
Irene works several jobs one after another. She is employed as a child minder at a children’s party, then as a nanny, then she works as a pool cleaner. While cleaning the pool, Irene falls in and hits her head on the bottom of the pool, giving her a strange vision where she sees household items such as chairs and dishes floating around her in the pool. In the next scene, we see Irene act out a surreal scene where she performs a series of unusual actions in a Home Depot parking lot. She slowly walks around the edges of a parking space, tracing its dimensions. Irene jumps up and down in place and opens and closes car doors. Finally, she lies on the ground in a parking spot as cars drive around her. In the last moments of the episode, she recalls her conversation with Bryant where he describes needing to work very long hours to make enough money but at the same time, working those long hours hinders the possibility of so much else he could do and traps him in those conditions.

Episode 04
Irene works at a catering job in Winter Park, a wealthy Orlando neighborhood that shows signs of its history built on racial segregation and she remembers an earlier discussion with Bryant where he talks about this disturbing prejudice in Orlando’s environment. Irene travels to Tallahassee to join a large protest opposing a new bill that the Florida Senate is proposing that would allow federal immigration (ICE) to make enforcement requests of police. On the way there, Irene recalls a conversation she had with Isaac who talks to her about areas of Orlando where undocumented workers are employed and are taken advantage of because they have few legal rights. Once she arrives in Tallahassee, Irene talks to many people at the protests, one of whom is Jose and he tells her about how the law will make undocumented workers more vulnerable to deportation, what type of work undocumented people do in the Florida economy and how this law could really harm the lives of people in the state. However, when the senate does not decide on the bill that day, the protesters leave dissatisfied.

Episode 05
Irene is evicted from her apartment. She packs up her things and as she carries her boxes down to her car, she tells herself a story about a town that is becoming poor. The town does everything to avoid becoming poor, but they cannot stop the process as their city becomes more and more impoverished. She leaves the apartment and the next morning we see her wake up on her friend’s couch. She signs up for more temporary Service Week jobs and she spends the morning reading about economics. She meets with her friend Michael, and they discuss economic conditions in Orlando where high costs of housing and other living expenses coupled with exceedingly low-wages make it increasingly impossible for most people to survive. She drives out to a cat adoption center and adopts a kitten, bringing the cat home to live with her in her car.

CREDITS

  • Irene — Irene Rincon
    Irene’s friend — Michael Gilligan
    Irene adopts a cat — Candy’s Cats

    Interviews
    Esther
    Carmen A. Arroyo
    Jose Castro
    Bryant Coleman
    Isaac Cropp
    Karen Hogan

  • Written by: Melanie Gilligan

    Director: Melanie Gilligan

    Production manager: Irene Rincon

    1st camera / director of photography: Andrew Osborne

    2nd camera / director of photography: Melanie Gilligan

    Sound recording: Andrew Osborne and Melanie Gilligan

    Post-production

    Editor: Melanie Gilligan

    Post-production sound: Paolo di Teodoro

    Grading: Andrew Osborne

    Thanks to:
    Leslie Rodriguez Acevedo
    Jeremy Haicken
    Unite Here