Becoming-With (Final Fantasies)

Through a mixed analysis and reflection on philosophical, scientific, critical, and speculative sources, Riley Fichter’s thesis will cover the various components that feed into his theory and mode of artmaking. With future speculation in mind, he suggests a nod to what the earth will look like some unknown years from now: a potential outcome where agency lies in the blending of organic and inorganic. This new form shatters humanity as dominant and envisions an epoch non-anthropocentric and life being continued through the nonhuman. Through an overarching metaphor of a river and the ebb and flow of its natural processes, he states the following: To understand-with, to eliminate notions of One and Other, to truly change, we must become-with.