Coming in 2026
1984
by
George Orwell
in
conversation with
Gino Ballantyne
through illustration and word
0x7C0 A New World Order
Gino is currently creating illustrations and text for a handmade one of a kind artist edition of
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four
by permission of
the estate of
the late Sonia Brownell Orwell.
George Orwell's 1984 covers critical areas of both politics and economics and is a warning against totalitarianism.
The novel explores how a centralized, oligarchic system can use economic control as a tool for political domination.
The construction of a New World Order, through the destabilisation of International Law and the United Nations, and the unlawful seizure of countries and their assets. Those include oil, minerals and control of the Artic. The race for the Artic has become a focus for increased power and political domination.
Writing in 1946 Orwell set out to describe a conceptual world of total unyielding authority, modelled on autocracy and set in the future. George Orwell's 1984 is a dystopian novel about a terrifying totalitarian future where the Party, led by the omniscient Big Brother, maintains absolute control over life, thought, and history. It follows Winston Smith, a low-ranking party member who rebels through forbidden love and independent thought, only to be broken by the state's surveillance, propaganda, and torture.
1984 exemplifies the totalitarian politics necessary to implement and manage such a controlled society. It is also a warning to future generations, who will have heard off, but never experienced totalitarianism and its resultant forces of violence, indoctrination, and it's systematic stripping away of society and the individual spirit.
It is a warning from Orwell about totalitarianism's "Absolute Control" and the political climate needed to orientate it.
With climate change melting the ice in the Artic and opening up this major geographical area of the world, the race to control Artic has grown. In the Artic places have become accessible and habitable, becoming treasure troves for the great powers of the world. With enormous mineral resources they attract land grabs, to enable economic control and political domination. The Artic is a very strategic location - near the North Pole - those who control the Artics waterways will be ideally situated to surveil missiles, launched from anywhere in the world and will be able to secure and download data from satellites. Giving technology the ability to be in Absolute Control of the negative and positive space of humanity. Where humans' are datasets, existing as code in spaces where digital, artificial intelligence (AI), and automated systems define both the opportunities (positive space) and constraints (negative space) of human existence. This transition, often discussed in the context of the technological singularity or advanced algorithmic governance, moves beyond using tools to living within a system defined by digital totalitarianism. Where human agency is broken through digital isolationism, stripping away autonomy of the individual.
An echo of the life of Winston, the main character in George Orwell's book 1984.
