Himala (Miracle)
A durational devotional: The Virgin Mary as network technology, unraveled through the Rosary as infrastructure and the becoming of an apparition myself.
2024–
Variable duration, last performance was 6 hours
Full performance in development
Himala reinterprets the mysteries of the rosary, rewriting them unto Mary's perspective (as container & tabernacle, as network technology, girl-saint, apparitional glitch) within a series of net art pieces & experimental infrastructures, presented as a durational desktop performance.
As a durational performance, Himala consisted of 5 computers – projected, on participants' phones, overlaying projections, on devices scattered around the room. I built custom controllers & scripts to progress through and alter the flow of the work: a prayer, a meditation. The first five mysteries of the rosary were premiered at CultureHub in October 18, 2024 – after a week as artist-in-residence at their space in New York.
What makes an apparition? Who authenticates a miracle? Is prayer not wholly computational? Is my spirit not measured with tallying? Is all my belief rested on invisible infrastructures and bodies? Is all this faith not a practice of networking? Can I too, become an apparition?
In an age where all bodies are heavens, technology is prayer, and delusions are divine, what would it mean to become an interface myself? I am the surveilled girl of the divine – immaculate, containing, transitory, ephemeral. All at once: omnipresent, surveilling, forgiving, embodied, pure–to apparate, be explicit, and be miraculous in my appearance. The girl, in her infrastructuring, has become a miracle. There is no offline or online self, just me and the angels. The reward for my devotion must be my delusion.
Treading through the infrastructural intimacies, containers & computers, and the domesticity of the divine – CultureHub Resident Artist Chia Amisola builds upon technological and Filipino Catholic mythologies in a new series of work that presents an ambient and ritualistic look towards our containers and the faiths they enable.
The history of Catholic ritual is one of ritual, communality, and poetry – now, Himala draws from Filipino practices such as the Pasyon to recenter containers. Can I become an apparition myself?
Himala was developed within the CultureHub Residency program
Performances
Photos by Ji Hoon Kim courtesy of CultureHub.