D1G1TAL anthropophagy x ALGØRITHMIC cannibalism:
A LECTURE-PERFORMANCE
IN TWO ACTS OR MORE (2025)
Duration: 35:00
English with simultaneous German translation
Premiered at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) Berlin, 30.5.2025. The lecture-performance explores the devouring characteristic latent in all humans and their/our creations. ‘Anthropophagy’ and ‘cannibalism’ are terms often used as synonyms to describe the consumption of another body, but the two terms are also differentiated via the Brazilian avant-garde Antropofagia via Oswald de Andrade’s Manifesto Antropófago (1928)—a manifesto that eats both Brazilian colonial history and European cultural imports concurrently to spew a unique philosophy. Indigenous cultures played a significant role to inspire the moderns. But in the industrialization that followed, their cultural importance was pushed to the background as an ‘obstacle’ to imported (and ill-fitting) models of development. This lecture performance therefore, dishes critique through a decolonial lens, discussing newer forms of colonization: from cyberspace, namely digital anthropophagy, to evolved forms brought about by algorithmic power and agency. Algorithmic cannibalism becomes more than a metaphor in the commodification and cannibalization of nature by capitalism at the expense of westernized societies, moulded into a monocultural mindset that lacks swarm intelligence to react appropriately. The performance-lecture reflects on the issue of—as the Manifesto Antropófago puts it—who is eating who, culling various voices into a polyphonic effect of many tongues and perspectives into the performative setting.
This new lecture-performance also partly reflects on what has elapsed in the last 15 years with the digital space since my previous work first published and performance in 2010: Digital Anthropophagy and the Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age
Above, right, the video documentation recorded at HKW, also accessible at
https://mediathek.hkw.de/video/performance-ramos-velasquez?p=1&list=videos&backscreen=videos
And with German simultaneous translation by selecting “DE” at the link.
Video ©Yatri Niehaus/HHKW
All photographs ©Milan Soremski/HKW,
except where noted on image.
Next performance at Beyond Gravity Festival,
Dortmund October 4, 2025, EN with simultaneous translation to FR.
https://theaterimdepot.de/media/pages/medialibrary/fe46d856dd-1758785510/programm-symposium.pdf
