Ritual
The Church of the Electric God (Lost Horizon Night Market, NYC, 2022)
Like most, if not all of the diverse experiences at Shadow Traffic’s Lost Horizon Night Market, the Church of the Electric God was a one-night-only affair. Worshippers who entered the ephemeral box-truck Church (on a strictly individual basis) communed with a sonic deity via electronic drone music.
“I’m Starting a Religion” (MTV’s “True Life”, 2015)
This episode of MTV’s True Life series documents the efforts of two quirky 20-somethings – Seattle’s Unicole Unicron and Chicago’s Christopher Karl Allman – as they strive to establish their new religions (Unicultism and The People of Ieya, respectively). The documentary is listed as (S2015 E18) and originally screened in 2015, which should be plenty … Read more“I’m Starting a Religion” (MTV’s “True Life”, 2015)
“A religion you can dance to”: Deborah Kelly’s Creation project
Australian artist Deborah Kelly describes Creation, a “queer science fiction climate change religion” and an experiment in collaboratively creating religion as a work of art: CREATION is a new religion, manifesting in spectacle and intimacy. A faith, a gathering of intention and purpose with which to face an era when paid opinion trumps environmental evidence. … Read more“A religion you can dance to”: Deborah Kelly’s Creation project
“Mother of the Dawn”: a look inside Brazil’s colorful, syncretic UFO religion
Founded in the 1960s, Brazil’s Vale do Amanhecer (Valley of the Dawn) is a new religious movement whose doctrine combines elements of Theosophy, Spiritualism, various Afro-Brazilian traditions and UFO theology.
Scattered notes on Poetic Faith
Poetic Faiths are those new religions that take the skeptical, scientific worldview as read and then ask “now what?” They tend towards: They are, in various permutations, simultaneously post-theistic and post-atheistic; beginning with the premise that there is no literal supernatural and then honoring the actual power of myth, symbolism, etc. in the human psyche, … Read moreScattered notes on Poetic Faith
“Anoana”
The experimental folk band Heilung (“Healing”) evokes ancient Northern European animistic rituals through their elaborate ceremonial costumes, instruments constructed from natural materials and runic lyrics drawn from diverse living and extinct languages.
“Spirit Catcher” (1977): evoking Black spiritualities with artist Betye Saar
An impressionistic ’70s-vintage documentary on the art of Betye Saar, whose assemblage shadow boxes, mixed-media sculptures and altars frequently evoke a kind of syncretic Black mysticism.
M. Dudeck and RELIGIONVIR.US
Artist/scholar/witchdoctor M. Dudeck offers a concise precis of his massive RELIGIONVIR.US project, a queer science fiction religion. In this video montage, Dudeck and his collaborators enact aspects of PSALMS: a 45-minute music-centered performance featuring 13 invented psalms accompanied by a complex digital soundscore and projected video.
“Faerie Tales” (1992)
A ’90s-vintage documentary on the Radical Faeries, a queer spiritual counterculture dating back to 1978-9.