SUMUGAN SIVANESAN: WHAT’S EATING GILBERTO GIL?

14 May 2010, Momentum Sydney, 231 Wilson Street, Eveleigh

Lecture and performance by Sumugan Sivanesan

“Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.” *

Our civilised societies have a long held fascination with the primitive. The Europeans devised the colonial ‘Other’, the Moderns espoused the perfection of ‘Natural Man’, and now we have the anthropological fantasy of the ‘Last Cannibal Tribe’.

Recent developments in gene technology have revealed that all present day human cultures, at some stage, consumed the flesh of their own.

What’s Eating Gilberto Gil? explores the history of the cannibal trope, its impressions here and its potential ‘fabulation’ across the shifting dynamics of contemporary global life — invariably edging towards transgression, transformation, and ultimately consumption of a manifest tabu.

Sumugan Sivanesan’s What’s Eating Gilberto Gil?, is part of 4A’s major curated project Last Words that will unfold over the 2010 calendar. Comprising performance, workshops, lectures, solo and group exhibitions. Last Words explores language, knowledge and communication in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation, particularly focused on Asian artists living here in Australia and overseas.

Momentum Sydney, 231 Wilson Street, Eveleigh (adjacent to Carriageworks)

*Oswald de Andrade, Manifesto Antropófago. In Piratininga 374th year of the deglutition of Bishop Sardinha.