This 1950 pull-down classroom map, recently found in a second-hand shop in Wisconsin, USA, reveals New Island when it was controlled by the USSR. By 1964, during the Cold War, the Island was declared a classified strategic entity by both the American CIA and the Russian KGB, and was removed from all maps worldwide. (See the full story in the New Island Guidebook.)
Since about 1995 I've been exploring the idea of an alternative culture - one more place out there where people consciously care for one another and for the land they live on.
It started with a long series of paintings of imagined landscapes with a realistic look about them. My interests in mapping and in pre-agricultural matriarchal cultures led me to combine these landscapes into an entire island-nation with a history involving that theme. The paintings seemed to indicate the place - an island - would be situated in the south Indian Ocean, near Australia. Once established, the location defined much of the island's present-day culture.
While researching that region's real-world history and politics, an alternative history emerged, based on the fateful wrecks of three ships beginning in 1799. The island's climate, geography and prehistory then helped shape the historical turn of events, all the way to the present.
I see New Island as a plausible fiction, a 12,000 square-mile alternate reality waiting to be discovered. What if there was a truly by-the-people democracy leaning gently toward a matriarchal culture? And what if the islanders cared deeply enough about their island, and the world beyond it, to live truly sustainably?
I'll continue to share New Island, and its messages, as much as possible with the world at large.
