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Articles

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2024): (Un)Recovering The Future

How to Become a Fossil: Towards a Multispecies Future

Submitted
June 4, 2024
Published
2024-06-07

Abstract

Through humor and irony, the collaborative project DIS reimagines a future that lies outside an anthropocentric framework, arguing instead for new relational forms of being that embrace a collective state of “thing-ness.” Moving away from futural projections that are centered in hope, and specifically hope in the next generation of humanity, its 2021 video Everything But The World incorporates the logics of multispecies kinship to deemphasize the hierarchical categories that separate humans from other living and nonliving entities alike, whether they might be animals, plants, or fossils. Essentially, through its work, DIS prompts viewers to consider the following question: how can we view the future not as a need to maintain hope in the progress of humanity but as a state in which we can all just collectively be “things”? This article provides a close reading of Everything But The World and some of its key scenes to illustrate how DIS envisions a new trajectory for the future that decenters the prominence and importance of humanity, making room for new and more equitable systems that promote the power of fossilization.