Portal #1 [Notes For A New World Order]

It’s the year 2117 and we are living in an harmonious world, built by the hands of the many rather than imposed by the vision of a few.
A new world order.

This re-ordering was dreamt by queers, womyn, blacks, browns – as then known, when language was still determined by classification.

They opted for a world without mass automation and made preservation of nature and sustainable practices the norm.

An ideal world.

Power has been declassified.
Value is on how gains are gotten.
Process over product.
Quality over quantity.

A note on the equilibrium of wellbeing in this new world order?
Curiosity over fear; as soon as we shied away from our differences, we began to appreciate our similarities and individualities.

Joy is found in the time spent contributing to the community.
A community that embraces the radical potential in collaboratively maintaining and retelling counter narratives and suppressed histories.

Old routes to new places, a new world with things in a different order.

Digging and building better holes.
New holes and new places.

The future achievements of this world are rooted in an unruly and unquantifiable ecology of stories and actions; stretching back to a world that’s older, beyond colonialism.

Beyond Beyond.
A different space.

Species of the world are free to travel, live and work in whichever territories, in any place of their choosing.
More ‘outlines’ – borders left on the old earth.

As a fervently nature loving species, we have good access to the beach, with time to be idle, to muse, to do now, to breathe the underlying spirituality of nature.

Acorn-type things.
Pine leaf bacheeítche.

This essence of the mystical energy in the balance of forces that govern nature and the universe; a cunning intelligence, a relaxed femininity.

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’