This episode of Pythian School of Futures sets off to envision a form of state which neither occupies land nor holds borders. The title of the episode refers to a project done by the Avenir Institute in which artists aim to bypass the bureaucratic convention of naturalization. The symbolic protocol to obtain citizenship does not require any paperwork but paying a visit to the website of the state: www.stateofnoland.info

The host of the podcast, Denis Maksimov puts the concept of state under scrutiny to discover how the outdated notion of statehood could be redefined according to the needs of the new world that is to come. He dives into speculative future scenarios to pose questions about how states could be useful rather than forceful.

Episode Notes:

The first article within the statement of principles describes the state of noland as a state of mind not aligned with any geopolitical entity and a state-after-state, a constellation of practices that replace political monopolies. The statement of principles are available at: https://www.stateofnoland.info/statement-of-principles

The nation-state is an ideal in which cultural boundaries match up with political boundaries. According to one definition, "a nation-state is a sovereign state of which most of its subjects are united also by factors which define a nation such as a language or common descent." It is a more precise concept than "country" since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation_state

The process in which a notionally non-European subject (be it a culture, a language, a city, or a nation) adopts several European features (often related to Westernization). Europeanisation in political science has been referred to very generally as 'becoming more European like'. More specifically than this, it has been defined in several ways. One of the earliest conceptualizations of the term is by Ladrech (1994, 69), who defines Europeanisation simply as ‘an incremental process of re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the extent that EC political and economic dynamics become part of the organizational logic of national politics and policymaking.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europeanisation

Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in 1651. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651). Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)

Rhizome as a philosophical concept was developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972–1980) project. It is what Deleuze calls an "image of thought", based on the botanical rhizome, that apprehends multiplicities. Deleuze and Guattari use the terms "rhizome" and "rhizomatic" to describe theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhizome_(philosophy)