Notes For A New World Order [the ongoing archive]

What is Notes for a new world order?

Notes for a new world order, began in 2017, imagines a future through the minds of women and non-binary creatives and thinkers of today. This ongoing collection of possibility seeks to expand the voices already present in the building of our current culture and society.

In the assembling of the archive we are acting as facilitators, interested in the potential outcomes of collective conversation that is left free to flow in different directions. As the archive expands outwards a series of unexpected connections are forming.

The growing archive forms a foundation for various ‘Portals’ to come into being; offshoots and access points into alternative realities. Portal #1 is an utopian future ‘built’ from the notes collected up until that point, imprinted onto the planetary movements of Trappist-1.

Notes for a new world order is ultimately a project that wants to re-imagine both the future and the present, not as a form of escapism but as a catalyst for a discourse on the unfixed scenarios ahead of us.

Read accompanying text by Nathalie Boobis

The advancement of human civilisation has gone hand in hand with greater degrees of human and environmental subjugation and destruction. The author of this trajectory of progress has mainly been white, western patriarchy. In order that their worldview could flourish, other ways of doing and thinking have had to be suppressed. Buried beneath the glossy surface of neoliberal hegemony that dominates our present, and is set to dictate our future, exists an ecology of alternative knowledges and ideas for organising human society. Every dream of a different future that sits in the shadow of the current world order holds within it the possibility of its own realisation. Beyond the existing paradigm are numerous, other ways of doing, living and being.

Historically, women have not been granted much authority to write societal or global futures, instead they have been consigned to dreaming in the shadows. Beyond Beyond have set about collecting these dreams, and the faces of the women that dare to dream them. We need look no further than The Bible or Capitalism to see the power of language and narratives to write whole systems of government. As Beyond Beyond build their archive of world visions by creative women they also start to amass a powerful tool; the blueprints for potentially more fulfilling, fair and sustainable, presents and futures. The same power of fiction as reality that has been used to seduce us could also rewrite our future trajectories. Notes for a new world order does not comprise a singular vision imposed by the few but a heterogeneous and elastic commons crafted by the many. The next stage of the project for Beyond Beyond is to collect the dreams of women beyond the creative field, adding the voices of female scientists, sociologists, historians, philosophers, architects, engineers, and more. As the archive grows, so the visions gain substance and ultimately a real proposition for a different future can emerge. There is much to suggest that we are positioned to witness the fall of our civilisation and we must be ready with our Notes for a new world order if we are to craft different ones in its place.

Text by Nathalie Boobis, 2017
Nathalie Boobis is part of the ‘Notes for a new world’ archive and curator of ‘Our House of Common Weeds’

Below is a small selection from the growing archive…

Artist Nicky Coutt’s note

Artist Jessie McLaughlin outside her old Primary School

Jessie’s note

Curator Nathalie Boobis at a portal to another dimension

Nathalie’s note

Artist Dafne Boggeri in Parco Sempione

Dafne’s note – audio track Alliance

Architect Wynn Pramana Chandra in her neighbourhood

It’s the year 2117 and we are living in a harmoniously fragmented world. Geographical borders between countries are loosely enforced, but each and every nation is split into clearly demarcated territories with walls dividing two opposing socio-political ideologies.

The ‘Inner States’
With advancement of technology and robotics took over most jobs, the ‘universal wage’ had come to play to drive the consumerist society on autopilot. e citizens of the Inner State waved goodbye to countless menial work so yes, you will find robots waiting your table instead. Bleak, you might think, and indeed some people lost their purpose of life now that one can afford to live decently without ever getting out of bed. The rest however, found the joy in the time they spend contributing to the community and interacting with people they actually care about, not because they might leave a good tip.

The ‘Outer States’
Coined as the ‘outer’ as they only usually occupy the outer boundaries of a nation when it has a stretch of coastline. A er all, the fervently nature loving citizens need a good access to the beach. They opted the world without mass automation and industrialisation where preservation of nature and sustainable practices are the norm. Naturally in the Outer States agriculture equals power which inevitably propels the race to become landowners. It is the survival of the fittest, or those born to the privilege to claim the soil. You work hard to earn a piece of mother earth but the sweet breeze of nature is worthy of your drop of sweat.

There are two currencies and each nation elects two leaders under one flag. Citizens of the world are free to travel, live and work in whichever territories in any country of their choosing, but there are no exchange of goods or currencies across Inner and Outer states. A er all, the sovereignty of the two opposing ideologies and is what binds the nations as one.

Wynn’s note

Writer and Artist D Mortimer in Hampstead Heath

D’s note: postcard of Michelangelo Caravaggio’s John the Baptist (1604), silicone dildo, pine leaf from the grass at Kew Gardens, 1st Edition of ‘The Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas’ by Gertrude Stein (1933), acorn type thing from the pavement