Commonwealth. 2007. Single channel HD video with sound. 5:00

Commonwealth examines ideologies of social order through re-visiting the Soviet Space program of the 1960's, in particular Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the earth in 1961. The manipulation of events and the role of the individual figurehead in shaping societal consensus is illustrated. Gagarin, the farmer's son selected from the masses to represent the Soviets internationally, is brought back from history, and travels through a flickering series of constantly shifting landscapes - Tarkovskian forests and desolate barren red fields.

A rich collection of visual references are brought together in building the piece; Medieval frescoes, Soviet mosiac murals, the iconography of the space race, the visual language of progress, and the utopian architectures and designs of the World Fairs of the late 1960s and early 1970's.

Inspired in part by Hobbes' writings on the Body Politic, and writings on the history of science, the piece is a visual examination of governance, division, and community. Part puzzle, part sociological diagram, the piece maps the visual language of an ideology onto landscape to look at how ideology works in creating fictions of social order.