Himala (Miracle)

Catholicism and cyberfeminism, apparitions and angels, delusion and devotion

After the Filipino word for 'miracle' and the 1982 Ishmael Bernal film, Himala explores female visionaries, Marian apparitions, and the politics of faith in the age of AI. Going recasting the Virgin Mary as network infrastructure, prayer as computation, and the apparition as glitch.

Himala reinterprets the mysteries of the rosary and Catholic history, rewriting them to present Mary's perspective (as container & tabernacle, as network technology, girl-saint, apparitional glitch).

Himala is a research series, a becoming, and an offering — a tethering of both historical studies the history of Catholicism and computation from the lens of cyberfeminism, Philippine studies, and technologies; and future-looking cyberfeminismthat exists as a series of net art pieces & experimental infrastructures, presented as a durational desktop performance. 

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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.