21/05/2024 08:30 - 13:15

HALL: STERI - CHIESA DI S. ANTONIO ABATE

Proponent: Andrejč G., Dos Santos V.

Chair: Furlan N.

Speaker: Andrejč G., Dos Santos V., Grieve G., Helland C., Krebs V.

The increasing presence of religious images, themes, and practices in ludic and 'secular' media, as well as the growth of religious communities and narratives on virtual platforms, have prompted the need for rethinking the ontological and epistemological aspects of digital religion. Especially after the COVID-19 pandemic—and how it radically pushed many religious actors and communities online (Evolvi 2022)—the perspective on virtual environments as affordable media for experiencing and 'doing' religion (Grieve 2022) has been broadening, bringing attention to its phenomenological and material aspects (Radde-Antweiler 2021) while inviting us to analyze not only the textual components of religion but also its aesthetic, creative, and sensual dimensions. According to the aforementioned, this panel aims to explore how the intersection of media technologies, digital cultures, and traditional and nontraditional religions proposes or expresses lived religious experiences and activities. More specifically, it will focus on: 1) the embodied, social, and performative nature of religion in virtual platforms; 2) the ways in which different religious traditions and realities produced and addressed their practices online; and 3) phenomenological questions about the ways religiously-potent immersive experiences work in digital media, are 'produced', and how they compare or relate to the religiously-potent experiences in the social context and/or nature beyond the digital.