New world

Names

• New World
• New World Music, New World Art, New World Culture, New World Cinema, New World Fashion, New World Nomads, etc.
• Can be applied to literature, theory, philosophy, politics, lifestyles and more
• Can overlap with Post-Western and many kinds of Futurisms.
• Can overlap with Intercultural & Transcultural Studies, Gender Studies, Post-Internet, Post-Production, New Materialism, Decolonial Studies, Ecology Studies, Third Culture, Fourth Culture, Fifth Culture, Subcultures, Hybridity, Queer Studies, Magical Realism, Digital Nomadism, Mobility Studies and more.
• Emergent from the mid 2010s and 2020s, not to be confused with other uses of the term.

Origin

• Coined by artist/musician/director/futurist Kai (Kari) Altmann in 2015, originally included in an essay she wrote in 2015 and posted online in 2020 with ongoing edits, plus subsequent writings and definitions. It was also the subject of her 2024 Masters Thesis in Intercultural Practices at Central Saint Martins.

Definitions & Descriptions

• Kai (Kari) Altmann describes New World artists as those who have a grasp of intercultural, transcultural and meta codes, worldviews and awarenesses as well as means of production, as a result of mobility, technology and cultural overlap, or expanding cultural awarenesses and inclusions. They use all these things toward new world imaginings, with "world" being something as small as a niche culture or language among friends or as large as an epic futurism or cultural movement.

• New World can relate to many different new worlds being formed and becoming exposed since the mid 2010s and early 2020s, with a specific focus on culture, language, heritage, futurisms and newly empowered geographies via new technologies, identities and lifestyles. It also assumes newly merged, hybridized understandings of materials and audiences along with intersectional concerns.

• New World coincides with the rise of "worlding" and "re-worlding", emerging trends in technology, art, global studies and cultural production at once. This is partly due to a post-Western, pan-optic and post-colonial shift in awareness, in addition to many technologies reaching new critical masses of connectivity. For instance, the internet has become more "meta" with the advent of algorithms and AI, at the same time that the "future is being decolonized", with massive movements like emergent futurisms, and the creative worlds of digital production and dissemination are opening up to anyone with a laptop or mobile phone.

• New World coincides with the exploding arena of emergent futurisms, one which has been catching fire especially since 2012 with the emergence of Indigenous Futurisms, and since 2020 after the CoVid pandemic.

• New World coincides with new kinds of materialisms and meta materialisms along with what Kai calls "meta imaging" and "metta imaging".

• New World describes a shifting Post-Western, Pan-optic and transcultural world.

• New World also coincides with a growing embrace of social, cultural, ecological and spiritual practices from the pre-Colonized and post-Colonized world.

• New World embraces a pattern of more flexible migration, including the reverse of "brain drain" patterns from the 1970s-early 2000s, ie. people moving "back" to their countries of origin or becoming location-flexible. This is also part of a more holistic embrace of heritage, identity and world culture at large, aided by unprecedented access to mobility, social connections and archives.

• New World also coincides with the exponential rise of international travel, including digital nomadism.

• Musician Ghali also pinpoints 2015 as a shift, a moment when he realized he could make music in Italian and his native Tunisian Darija instead of English, creating his own sound which also merged all these musical styles, and carved out a new niche in the world of music, which he felt had previously been dominated by Western trends and formats. Studies also show that English is losing its dominance in the music market. While the category of "World Music" used to relate to more to ethnic folk and classical music, "New World" music is contemporary and can be as massive as top 40 pop.

• Another example of New World Music is the rising trend of songs being made in multiple languages at once. Saint Levant, for instance, writes songs in a mix of French, English and Arabic.

• New World Cinema and New World Content can be largely attributed to things like Netflix and Youtube, with unprecedented access to media and content from different cultures and creators. Movies from other countries have been breaking into the Western milieu and the general Western media hegemony is dissipating, along with production becoming more intercultural and transcultural than ever before.

• New World is also tied to the study of de-colonization, emergent futurisms, post-internet music and post-internet art, and other movements like Offsite art and post-institution, post-production, crisiscore, post-capitalism, New Materialism, social media and others. A New World artist understands the cross-cultural and precarious conditions of making art.

• New World can relate to any one of these descriptions, or all of them within a project or an artist. Kai describes it as a term which is plural, diverse and flexible, and which can be evergreen and continually refreshing, rather than tied to a shelf-life, although she does see it as tied to the era of the 2010s and 2020s when it began emerging. A "New World" artist will be focused on the frontiers of holistic new worlds all the time--re-wilding the present, past and future to forge new pathways or systems and illuminate present cultural realities so that they are woven into future understandings. "New World" relates to multiple categories and definitions at once.

Artists and Creators

• Marwan Abdelhamid aka Saint Levant (US|ALG|PAL)
• Ahmed Ali aka Wegz (EG)
• Kai (Kari) Altmann aka Hitashya (US|IN|EG|FR)
• Ghali Amdouni aka Ghali (IT|TUN)
• Maya Arulpragasam aka MIA (UK|SL)
• Manal Benchlikha aka Manal (MOR)
• Monika Bielskyte (SA)
• Lae Carbon-Wilson aka M.O.T.H. (UK|DOM)
• Arpan Kumar Chandel aka KING (IN)
• Sooraj Cherukat aka Hanumankind (IN|US)
• Diljit Dosanjh (IN|CAN)
• Destiny Nicole Frasqueri aka Princess Nokia (US)
• GHE20G0TH1K (Venus X, Shayne Oliver, etc.)(US)
• Paul van Haver aka Stromae (BLG)
• Divine Ikubor aka Rema (NI)
• Jeremy Larroux aka Laylow (FR)
• Elian Marjieh aka Elyanna (CHI|PAL|US)
• NO NAZAR COLLECTIVE (Omar, Bianca Maieli, AKU, DJ Sudi + MTooray)(US)
• Nooriyah (UK|SAU|JP)
• Marwan Pablo (EG)
• Mehdi Ribati aka Madd (MOR)
• Naika Richard aka Naïka (US|HAI)
• Bobby Sanchez (US)
• Jasmine Sandlas (IN|CAN)
• Ali Sethi (US|PK)
• TELFAR (Telfar Clemens) (US|IT)
• Rosalía Vila Tobella aka Rosalía (SP)
• Samar Younes (US)
• Laureen Zouaï aka Lolo Zouaï (US|ALG|FR)

Events

• New World Mayday, Central Saint Martin's, May 2024.

Publications

Magazines, Journals, Blogs, Playlists

• Hitashya aka Kai (Kari) Altmann, "New World Music", Youtube, Music Video Playlist, 2018-.
• Kai (Kari) Altmann, XLE.LIFE, 2018-.
• Hitashya aka Kai (Kari) Altmann, "New World", Spotify, Music Playlist, 2020-.

Videos, Podcasts, Radio

• Lae Carbon-Wilson, Kai (Kari) Altmann, "New World Mayday", Radio Alhara, Bethlehem and Online. Live broadcast from London.

Essays, Articles, Book Chapters

• Kai (Kari) Altmann, "Welcome to the New World, You're Late", [2021] 2023.

• "Ambiguations and Meta Abstractions of The New World (An Abstract!)", requested essay for Representing and Understanding Abstraction Today, 2024. Edited by Alessandro Ferraro.

Theses

• Kai (Kari) Altmann, "Welcome to the New World Part I: Emergent Transcultural Futurisms and Presents", Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, Masters Thesis, 2024.

See Also

Futurisms, Worlding, Re-Wilding, Post-Internet Music, Post-Internet Art, Post-Western, Hybrid, Systems Thinking, Ambiguationist, Pan-Optic, Intercultural Studies, Transcultural Studies, Third Culture, Fourth Culture