D1G1TAL anthropophagy x ALGØRITHMIC cannibalism–a lecture-performance in two acts or more
Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez
Lecture Performance
Fr., 30.5.2025
19:00
Angie Stardust Foyer
In English with simultaneous German translation
Free entry

Courtesy of Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez
D1G1TAL anthropophagy x ALGØRITHMIC cannibalism––a lecture-performance in two acts or more is Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez’s newest work exploring 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.