Himala

Himala (Tagalog for miracle; and after Ishmael Bernal's film) is a series of at least twenty internet art pieces & desktop performances, each corresponding to a mystery of the Rosary. The performance exists online, and offline as a ritual recitation in the form of a 6–12 hour durational piece.

Preview of Himala at Living Room Light Exchange, May 2024 in San Francisco

A study of divinity, duration, delusion in gods, girls, gaze, and glitch... meditations on Marian apparitions (which the Rosary itself originates from; documenting & verifying the divine under a surveillance state), matriarchy and motherhood, Mary as Girl-Saint, & rosary as Catholic & feminist infrastructure (maternal & vessel-like, as are computers), everyone as girl-god online (girls/software as virginal passive receptacles), and the line between devotion and delusion. (Did Mary have any choice but to say yes?)

Drawing from the Filipino Pásyon, an epic narrative on the life of Jesus Christ performed during Holy Week (& durational, chanted in form), this work recenters feminine bodies and containers under the inseparability of technology & religion. Now, the Virgin Mother is centered in the artifact she has provided that has always centered the life other than hers. Can the girl manifest only to those deluded enough to believe her?

Zoë Sofia's Container Technologies discusses the femininity of container technologies; object-systems that protect, storage, intercess; Le Guin posits the first human tool as a vessel. Prayer is infrastructure; the Rosary is infrastructure, and the saintly body of Mary carries. (As she contained a material god) The browser, operating system, terminal, and website too, are vessels. I have long been interested in their maternal qualities: their wetness, virginity, purity, machinic, ritual potentialities. (Computers turn us all into Girl-Saints.)

The rosary itself originated from a Marian apparition. We mythologize and make narratives around our tools. Our hallucinates contain realities and the bodies of god.

Preview of Himala at Living Room Light Exchange, May 2024 in San Francisco

A work in progress, Himala will manifest as net art piece, ritual studies, conversion rites, and performances in the next months. Reach out if you're interested in hosting a performance.