Digital Anthropophagy and the Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age (2010) 

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

Presented 2.2.2011, Haus der Kulturen der Welt - Berlin. Recorded webcast of performance at transmediale video archive: http://vimeo.com/20097816

Version with English subtitles can be viewed at http://vimeo.com/20886138 (Pt.1) 

and http://vimeo.com/21013493 (Pt.2)

Published, and performed at ISEA2010/RUHR. 

Dortmund, Germany

August 24, 2010

See Performance Art for documentation.

Other Presentations:

Excerpts from The Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age 

Emergeandsee Media Arts 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. Upcoming: ISEA2012/Albuquerque - Latin American Forum, International Congress Vom Begriff zum Bild: Medienkultur nach Vilém Flusser, Brazil, 12/2012.

Pindorama não é mais! Nunca! Não volta atrás! 

Eis o índio tecnológico da revolução digital que quer mais do que apito!

Leia o Manifesto completo 

em Português

This work is comprised of a theoretical essay: Digital Anthropophagy and a manifesto-poem: Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age. My re-manifesto offers 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”. In mine, along with my theory Digital Anthropophagy, I update the anthropophagic practice of cultural cannibalism to the digital age, where the virtual world is the new frontier and anyone can be a colonizer, with data as the new currency.

As this piece travels, presented in various festivals and symposia, it will morph and acquire a local flavor adapted to the locale and sometimes to the day on which it is presented. The work itself ‘is’ anthropophagy, not just ‘about’ it. For example, because transmediale set my presentation for Feb. 2nd, I adapted the performance to include the symbolism of Iemanjá, the African diaspora deity, Queen of the Ocean, the Spirit of Water, who is celebrated in Brazil on that day. So I built a boat in her honor, as she is herself a result of a cultural remix of African, Amerindian, and European elements. I delivered my theory about Digital Anthropophagy from inside that boat...The Anthropophagic Boat to Iemanjá. At the end of the performance, after having read my Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age and shared it with the audience, I invited everyone to deposit offerings to Iemanjá in the boat as it set sail virtually to Brazil in time to join the Iemanjá celebrations. All aboard!!! And viva Iemanjá!!!

Publications:

•First partially published at proceedings catalogue of ISEA2010/RUHR (International Symposium on Electronic Art) and presented within the conference Electronic Art: Cyborgs and Transhumans

•ISEA2011/Istanbul where the piece was also performed 

•Extensively referenced in Carolyn Guertin’s new book Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art. Imprint: Continuum. Pub. date: 26.4. 2012. ISBN: 9781441131904

•Anthropophagic Re-Manifesto for the Digital Age (ENG, PT) performances documented on exhibit catalogue/art book Perpendicular Casa e Rua, a project supported by Brazil Ministry of Culture. Imprint: ICC. Pub. date: 31.3.2012. ISBN: 978-85-61659-23-3

•SCANZ 2013 Festival in New Zealand (Intercreate Research Center)

We want more than your whites and blacks brought from far away lands, give us thine colorful data from the virtual worlds. 

Read the complete Manifesto in English

Excerpt from Digital Anthropophagy theoretical essay

Anthropophagy (as usually described)

Anthropophagy: (Greek: anthropos, “human being” + phagein, “to eat”) is the eating of human flesh. Main definitions:

•Cannibalism, the eating of human flesh by a human or humans

•Self-cannibalism, the eating of one’s own flesh

•Eucharist, the ceremonial eating of Jesus’s body as wine and bread 

Digital Anthropophagy (a term I have coined in 2009)

• All of the above Anthropophagic practices if done virtually, i.e., with the aid of computers, social online networking, and other digital devices; or if executed in reality but facilitated digitally.

• A new paradigm of input/output models generated via the internet. 

• A new practice of cultural consumption involving a technological mediation for input (both the feeding and the being fed), digestion, and output.