D1G1TAL anthropophagy x ALGØRITHMIC cannibalism (2025)

A LECTURE-PERFORMANCE IN TWO ACTS OR MORE

DREAM COLLECTOR (2022)

Art in public space.

This lecture-performance looks at newer forms of colonization through a decolonial lens. From the emerged dynamics in cyberspace, namely digital anthropophagy of the 2000s to evolved forms brought about by algorithmic power and agency. 

DIGITAL ANTHROPOPHAGY AND THE ANTHROPOPHAGIC 

RE-MANIFESTO FOR THE DIGITAL AGE (2010-2016)

Winner of the Vilém Flusser Theory Award Distinction - transmediale.11

>Performance documentations

http://www.quietrevolution.me/DIGITAL_ANTHROPOPHAGY.html

Presented as lecture-performance with publication on event proceedings and catalogues. Premiered at E-Culture Conference section of ISEA2010/RUHR, panel Cyborgs and Transhumans. Further presentations after transmediale.11: Emergeandsee Media Art Festival, Berlin. 6/2011; ISEA2011/Istanbul; Moscow Biennial 2011; International Congress Image, Imagination, Fantasy: 20 Years without Vilém Flusser, Brazil (via skype from Berlin); Art Exhibit at ABCiber conference 20,000 Leagues, Brazil (via skype from Berlin); Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway 3/2012. ISEA2012/Albuquerque (LatinAmericanForum), International Congress Vom Begriff zum Bild: Medienkultur nach Vilém Flusser, Brazil, 12/2012, Kultursymposium Weimar (Goethe Institut) 2016.

SOMNEX IN LUMINEM (2009)

Live videodance performance

Somnex in Luminem is a live video-dance with sound art performance featuring dancers whose movement and forms are abstracted to various degrees. The core concept is the play between dream and reality realized as a media conversation executed in space and time. This work was derived from my earlier performance art piece: We Hide Our Monsters Underneath Our Pillows. The story is based on conflict resolution in the realm of lucid dreaming, a safe place to deal with the duality of human nature including all its transgressions. 

Somnex in Luminem was initially developed in New York City in 2008 with participation of dancers from New York Metropolitan Opera and Flexicurve Dance Company. 

Recorded live webcast from Transmediale.11: http://www.transmediale.de/content/digital-anthropophagy-and-anthropophagic-re-manifesto-digital-age-presentation. 

Personal archive videos with English subtitles below:

Light-design technique and videoart: the dancers onstage slowly become self-lit, while their LED body lights and body silhouettes are captured by a camera, which in turn feeds the video into the computer software for live manipulation, then projected onto the screen behind the dancers. The live technique creates abstractions of the real-time stage performance. The resulting poetic painting in motion in the background loosely resembles what’s being seen on stage as if in an Alpha (hypnotic) state of dreaming.

The videos below show both the real-time dance performance and the videodance imagery manipulated live during the performances:

The work is comprised of a theoretical essay, where I propose a new practice of consumption (ingestion, digestion, excretion) involving a technological mediation. It contains a manifesto-poem with a new take on the original Manifesto Antropófago written by the Brazilian modernist author, Oswald de Andrade in 1928. His manifesto was an assertion of the unique Brazilian voice in the emerging modern time, away from clichés of colonialism, while unapologetically metabolizing outside references from the “First World”. My reflection updates that anthropophagous practice to the digital age, where the virtual world is the new frontier and anyone can be a colonizer, but also a cannibal. My reflection also thematizes the contemporary carnavalization of Indigeonus personhood.

This work was initiated in May 2009 and completed in July 2010. But in reality, it is morphing according to the interplay with the date and place where it’s presented. The work thus becomes anthropophagy in action during the performance. For example, the work incorporated the scheduled performance date at Transmediale.11 of February 2nd, the celebration of Iemanjá. So, I dedicated my presentation to the Afro-Brazilian water entity, because this deity is herself a result of a cultural syncretism, a remix of African, Amerindian, and European elements. I built a boat (symbolic of making offerings to Iemanjá), in which I read my Digital Anthropophagy essay and recited my Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age. When I finished the reading, I ate a piece of the manifesto and shared it as ”eucharist” with the audience. Then, I invited the audience to deposit offerings in the Anthropophagic Boat to Iemanjá. Following, I called up a spiritual center of the Yorubá religion in Brazil via Skype to ask for their blessing to put the boat in the virtual sea (video screens with video of ocean recorded in Rio de Janeiro). The performance ended with a Q&A session with the audience while the boat “sailed” through the turbulent waters of digital cannibalism. In the performance at Emergeandsee Media Arts Festival, I built a boat from German newspapers and read Digital Anthropophagy as an “El Requerimiento.” The performance acquired yet additional local flavors at ISEA2011/Istanbul; at Moscow Biennale; at Bergen Art Academy in Norway; as well as in the performances via skype from Berlin to symposia and exhibits in Brazil.

Above: Emergandsee Media Arts Festival, Berlin. 6.2011

Below: ISEA2010/RUHR. 8.2010, manifesto eaten and shared with audience members.

This work takes as inspiration the ephemeral nature of organic life cycles and interactions. A structure to be occupied by people invited to participate. Sound art, film projection mixed with videomicrography, and organic textile sacs. An immersive environment offering the possibility of a multisensorial interactive experience. The installation becomes a performance upon interaction of the public as participants. 

The floor is covered with earth upon which the cocoon sacs rest. My handmade film called Metamorfose is projected in the background. The abstract organic images in the film derive from an earthly gestation process. I asked friends throughout the world to bury rolls of 16mm films bare into the earth for 1 year (4 seasons) following a set of my own chance-operation instructions including bathing and spicing the film in substances of their choice before burial. This film completes the aesthetics of a full cycle of renewal: death, decay, fertilization, gestation, and rebirth, generating the visuality of each film frame. 

Below: transmediale.11. 

Two slides morph along the 25-minute lecture. 

The anthropophagous portrayed by Hans Staden in the 1500’s and the new fine young cannibals at the computer.

An excerpt from the film METAMORFOSE: Berlin

Stephen Kovats, Artistic Director of Transmediale.11 introduces the presentation. 

A Q&A session follows at the end.