Cannibalism as a start

I started my research inspired by an early XX century brazilian artistic movement. It was called Anthropophagism (synonym for cannibalism).

It is basis is the act of appropriation.

The projects I envisioned were related to the use of computers to cannibalize current social, artistic and political issues. In other words, to automate the process of finding and rearranging information. The works would explore the potential of the performative live context.

I produced some experiments in this direction (ex: ‘Movie Parser’, 2010).

By going further on my research, and reflecting on my creative process,i understood better what actually interested me in this process of cannibalizing or appropriating.

Appropriation means to put things in a new context. To translate (and to deal with the distortion that the translation produces). The tools we use to represent and capture the world are appropriation devices. For instance, after we shoot a photograph we place the subject in a new medium. We take what is public and place it in our own representation space. By making it ours, we can relate to it and try to understand it.

These translations actions over an object often don’t happen only once. It’s a repetitive process. Therefore, the concept of recursiveness is important for me.