Common Knowledge uses the form of a journey undertaken by the camera/viewer through a series of territories: cornfield, marsh, garden, the pages of a dismembered encyclopaedia, woodland and conifer plantation. This narrative framework provides a metaphor for a specific strand of history indicated in the titles of the tape's four sections:
Finding - Europe 1934-38
Gathering - U.S.A. 1933-39
Fathering - U.S.A. 1942-45
Japan 1945 - Angels Leaving
These sections refer to significant phases in the development of nuclear weapons: the discovery of nuclear fission; the relocation of scientists from Europe to the United States during World War II; the development of the first weapons in the U.S.; a journey to Japan, and the implications of the bomb's use.
Various devices are added to the camera during the course of the tape. A spotlight illuminates a dog harnessed by blue rope, pulling camera/viewer along a dark woodland path; a large wheel made from two-handled tree saws takes the viewer down an aisle between conifers. The final scene shows a glowing dovecote bleaching to white as double-exposed (or 'fissioned') birds abandon it: a requiem to an innocence traded for ever greater control of nature.
Throughout the journey male and female voices read versions of the history described above, reworked as accounts of childhood games and folk stories. Other aspects of the soundtrack follow a trajectory beginning in organic or 'messy' processes; continuing through hand clapping and rhythmically-struck hand-tools; industrial machinery and aircraft noise; finally coalescing in a musical section played on a crude version of the Japanese sho, built around reeds from a Western harmonium.
The tape extends the scope of the epithet "it is common knowledge that...(etc)" by indicating that the effects and consequences of ambitious scientific research sooner or later permeate the world of the everyday, affecting everyone. If the benefits and stresses arising from a science/technology driven culture are inevitably shared, then the question of collective responsibility for this scientific activity also arises. From the advent of nuclear weapons and atomic power to the end of the Cold War nuclear physics raises these questions: at the end of the 20th century genetics occupies a similar position.
Funding and production details
Common Knowledge was produced through a Video Artist's Bursary funded by The Arts Council of Great Britain in association with Sheffield City Polytechnic and the Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield.
Voices: Shirley MacWilliam, Andrew Stones
Crew: Mark Purcell, John Jordan, Frances Hegarty, Kiaran Saunders, Kathleen Stones, Colin Stones
Cornfield: Pearson's Farm, Wentworth
Edit Facilities: Sheffield Independent Film Ltd.
Mappin curator: Mike Tooby. SCP liaison: Steve Hawley. SCP technical: Ron Hawksworth
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