Paul Weiner Paul Weiner

Common Knowledge

Common Knowledge is an ongoing body of work that produces fabricated narratives within real information systems. Images, texts, and events are constructed and released into the public domain where they detach from authorship and reappear as fact. The series examines how consensus forms through repetition, scale, and institutional uptake.

Case File 01
Prospective Athlete Reported Deceased (Bohdan Popova)
Year: 2022
Status: Circulated / Published / Archived
Reach: 100+ online news outlets, major print newspapers, television, sports news, repost networks
Selected documentation

The story of a war martyr's death is released into circulation without attribution. The work accumulates credibility as it is repeated, reformatted, published, printed, and cited across news platforms. The afterlife of the fabricated martyr becomes inseparable from the mechanisms that authenticate and promote it.

Case File 02
Reported Phenomenon: Distributed Sightings
Year: Ongoing
Status: Circulated / Archived
Reach: Large conspiracy accounts, cross-platform dissemination, repost networks
Selected documentation

Released across multiple channels with varying degrees of visibility, these images of aliens demonstrate how belief is conditioned by context. High-exposure posts invite scrutiny while low-visibility insertions evade verification and persist through ambiguity. As attribution disappears, the image becomes a receptive surface with meaning produced through circulation, projection, and reuse.

Case File 03
Quotations Attributed to a Source
Year: Ongoing
Status: Published / Archived
Reach: Major news outlets (BBC, NBC News, The New York Times, Forbes et al.)
Selected documentation

The artist is repeatedly quoted across unrelated contexts in mainstream news outlets where attribution confers authority. Credibility accumulates through quotation as statements are accepted as truth or expert opinion.

Case File 04
Reported Combatant: Kharkiv Killer
Year: 2022
Status: Circulated / Published / Archived
Reach: Cross-platform dissemination, propaganda repost networks
Selected documentation

The work enters public discourse as a piece of war propaganda centered around a heroic figure. Meaning is produced not by the image alone, but by the scale and velocity of its circulation.

Selected source material, publication records, and extended circulation archives are available upon request.