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Paper short abstract:

The presentation will explore the relationship between Roma pilgrims and the visual aspects of the Csatka Pilgrimage in Hungary, the largest Roma pilgrimage in Central and Eastern Europe. It will also examine the colonial specificities present in media representations of the pilgrimage.

Paper long abstract:

The largest "Roma pilgrimage" in CE-Europe is organized every September in the small Hungarian village of Csatka. Around 30000 pilgrims arrive, of whom roughly 90% are Roma. The presence of the Roma has always provoked controversy among the authorities, the police, church people, the locals, and non-Roma pilgrims. One of the reasons for the disputes is that the vernacular religiosity and the behaviour of the Roma is considered “unusual” by members of the majority society. Roma have always dressed in their own festive costumes, spending money at the vendors on kitsch, bringing huge bouquets of flowers, enormous candles, and even making dozens of dresses for the Virgin Mary statue. All this is accompanied by ambiguity among the non-Roma pilgrims. The conflict between Roma and non-Roma is further intensified by the Roma “turbofolk” music party in the meadow near the church.

The ethnic pilgrimage is an excellent opportunity to analyze 1) contemporary Roma folk art, 2) how Roma pilgrims use and make images to represent themselves in social media during pilgrimage, 3) how Roma pilgrims connect and use religious images, including religious kitsch purchased from the vendors, and 4) the visual representation of the pilgrimage in various media.

In addition, the visual representation of the pilgrimage reveals strong colonisation strategies and mentality on the part of non-Roma pilgrims, the Catholic Church and clergy, and in media representations.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation focuses on film documentaries produced about pilgrimages during the 1960s in Hungary. I examine how these anti-religious propaganda films attempted to convince people of in the fraudulent nature of religious pilgrimage sites during the Cold War era.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation focuses on film documentaries produced about pilgrimages during the 1960s in Hungary. Through my visual examples (Poisonous Kiss, Miracle in 1950, and Mary of Hasznos), I illustrate how vernacular religiosity labeled as “subversive,” “backward” or anti-progressive was portrayed. Using film clips and visual examples, my presentation analyzes how public health hazards associated with bacterial and viral infections from ‘miraculous water’ and touching and kissing holy statues by pilgrims are used to debunk religious practices and dissuade.

Discourses on progress, science, well-being, and morality are mediated in these films, which also reveal a degree of ambiguity and a questioning of values that are not present in the more extreme Soviet-style anti-religious propaganda. The filmmakers’ “eye” is ambivalent, and the films constitute a strong ethnographic interest in religion combined with a unique Socialist religious sensitivity.

It is important to note that the repressive apparatus of communism did not simply want to document everyday life and culture of the period, but it had a constructed message, which can be considered a fabricated reading of reality. Documentaries and images were instrumentalized and became powerful tools in support of the regime’s narratives and their underlying truth claims.

This presentation aims to look beyond the propagandistic portrayals of pilgrimages and answer methodological questions such as how anthropological research could use historical documentaries that were produced to hinder religious practices during Communist times; and how this historical-anthropological research on anti-religious propaganda films provides so-far hidden important insights into the hardly known Christian materiality of communist/socialist period. Is it possible to liberate these documentaries and allow alternative narratives to emerge?

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Paper short abstract:

Focusing on the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas in the Turkish-occupied peninsula of Karpasia (Cyprus), the paper explores how pilgrimage is framed and constructed on different scales and in different locations by inquiring into the non-religious contexts in which its images circulate.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores how pilgrimage is framed and constructed on different scales and in different ‘institutional locations’ (Coleman and Eade 2018: 16), by inquiring into the non-religious contexts in which its images circulate. Looking at the Greek-Cypriot pilgrimages to the Christian Orthodox Monastery of Apostolos Andreas in the Turkish-occupied peninsula of Karpasia (Cyprus), it focuses on a particular photograph of the Monastery which features on the back cover of school exercise books along with the phrase ‘I Do not Forget’. It argues that the circulation of the Monastery’s picture within the context of the educational policy of ‘I Do not Forget’, and the site’s juxtaposition with other occupied sites, the images of which also feature on the covers of school exercise-books, transform the Monastery into a site of memory, and a political symbol of occupation and struggle for return. This frames the pilgrimage experience of those who were born after Cyprus’s division (1974) and who had never been to the site before the opening of the checkpoints (2003), making it a recognizable and familiar part of their landscape.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the ethnographic exploration of religious devotees and pilgrims’ use of digital media and religious websites. Part of an ethnographic work based at Gaya Pilgrimage, India, a famous Hindu pilgrimage site for performing the shraddha (offering food to ancestors) ritual.

Paper long abstract:

The emergence of Digital Religion over the past couple of decades has impacted how we understand, define, practice, live out and engage with religion in a global networked society. This paper deals with the ethnographic exploration of religious devotees and pilgrims’ use of social media and religious websites. This paper is part of an ethnographic work based at Gaya Pilgrimage, India, a famous Hindu site for performing the shraddha ritual. The intervention of new communication technologies changes how the pilgrimage journey is organized. New technology, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Web pages and other Apps, enables the traditional ritual Pind-daan (appeasing or worshipping the departed ancestors’ soul) to enter the commercial world. Internet technology is used not only to encourage visits to pilgrimage sites but also to develop ‘onlife’ rituals, complementing offline religion. Many religious apps such as” Sri Mandir, ‘Devdarshan’, and websites also offer ‘onlife’ pind-daan ritual at Gaya. This new mode of performing rituals at Gaya has also changed how we perceive pilgrimage, organise rituals, and understand ourselves as Hindu. These apps and web pages often represent simplified mythological and historical narratives legitimising the power of ritual, place, and the priest at the sacred complex of Gaya, India. The paper will also explore the role of the State in promoting the Gaya pilgrimage site using digital technologies. This study will examine the intricacies of new communication technologies with pilgrimage-based rituals and the mediation of different prevalent narratives from the field site.

Keywords: Digital, Pilgrimage, Onlife, Pind-Daan, Rituals

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the aestheticisation of Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimage through the lens of pilgrims' image-making, arguing that this activity influences the pilgrimage experience. Self-created visual narratives offer rich insights into personal and cultural aesthetics associated with pilgrimage.

Paper long abstract:

During the 2010s, at least two films dramatising Tibetan pilgrimages to Mount Kailash in Western Tibet were released in mainland Chinese cinemas, one achieving remarkable success. In the same period, the surge in popularity of Tibetan Buddhism among urban Han Chinese saw pilgrimage travel to Tibetan areas become an integral part of what it meant to practise Tibetan Buddhism. With the spread of smartphones and other devices, documenting pilgrimage travel through photos and videos became a routine part of the experience. In 2015, Nuola Huofo, a young Tibetan reincarnate lama from western Sichuan, decided to lead a group of his Chinese disciples on a two-week circumambulation of Mt Kailash with two videographers in tow whose job was to capture the entire journey. After their return, the footage was fashioned into a documentary, producing a vivid depiction and record of a transformative pilgrimage experience.

In this paper, using Nuola Huofo’s amateur documentary as my focus, I explore the aestheticisation of Tibetan pilgrimage through image-making by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims – and, in this case, their Tibetan lama. On the one hand, I argue that pilgrims’ attention to capturing or representing the spiritual or transformative dimensions of the pilgrimage in a visually compelling manner influences how they perceive, experience, and engage with the practice of pilgrimage. At the same time, I suggest that pilgrimage participants’ self-created visual representations – together with their choices in framing, composition, and narration – offer rich insights into the personal and cultural aesthetics associated with pilgrimage.

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Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will discuss how creating visual materials as methodological approach can help us understand and capture the transformations of the pilgrimage site, the translocations of the particular objects, and the creation of new elements in the pilgrimage landscape.

Paper long abstract:

During my ethnographic research of pilgrimage sites in Bosnia and Herzegovina I visited the same sites for years. Every time I visited a particular site, I was taking photographs and making videos. However, at that time I did not realise that what I was doing is actually creating photos of “pilgrimage site life”, and recording another transformations that Bosnian Croat pilgrimages will go through. After the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995) and revival of pilgrimages after Communist period (1945-1991), pilgrimages as arenas for performing religious identities became equally important symbols of national identity in a war-torn country where diverse religious and national communities are in constant competition and contestation. One of the manifestations of these competitions are the re-construction and construction of religious architecture i. e. pilgrimage landscapes that are intended to mark the space of the religious and national community.

What I was following, then, was the creation of new sedimentations of time (Hayden and Katić 2023). However, I only realised this by looking at the visual materials I created over the years. Researching and visiting the same sites every year I captured the transformations of the site, the translocations of the particular objects and the creation of new elements in the pilgrimage landscape. Taking the example of the Kondžilo pilgrimage site in northern Bosnia I will discuss how creating visual materials as methodological approach can help us understand the life cycle of a pilgrimage site but also a life of one community, in this case Bosnian Croats.

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Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to outline the contours of visual ethnographic research that conceptualizes ritual interactions of devotees with their saints at shared pilgrimage sites.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to outline the contours of visual ethnographic research that conceptualizes ritual interactions of devotees with their saints at shared pilgrimage sites. Supported by photographic and filmic accounts of different ethnographic instances of ritual interaction of devotees with their saints and their embodiments through images and objects, this paper aims to present an ethnography that visually elucidates the sensory perception as embodied in saint veneration rituals. The analysis of the ethnographic material dwells on such concepts as mimesis (Taussig), atmosphere (Boehme), and resonance (Rosa) to explicate how members of the different Christian and Muslim communities assemble at shared sacred sites in Hatay, how they become like one another, and dissolve marked differences into complex webs of relationships with the saint so that their veneration rituals become sensorily indistinguishable. By focusing on ritual as aesthetics, the proposed argument is developed through the analysis of saint veneration rituals in their dynamic interconnectivity and their specific modes of sensory perception. The objective of articulating such a framework for an aesthetic analysis is to integrate the sensory qualities of saint veneration rituals in interreligious contexts of shared sacred sites. By focusing on the aesthetics of visual perceptions of bodily gestures and movements, I aim to articulate an approach to the aesthetics of interrituality.

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Paper short abstract:

The sharing of the same sanctuaries by the faithful of different religions is under-represented in Art History. Visual Anthropology makes it possible to demonstrate it according to different principles of simultaneity, contiguity, alternation, succession, superimposition or conversion of spaces...

Paper long abstract:

Over the last twenty years or so, the phenomenon of the faithful of different religions sharing the same shrines has become a branch of the Anthropology of Pilgrimages. Despite its contradictory, counter-intuitive or even surprising nature, it is in fact a fairly common phenomenon, including in the monotheistic spheres. However, it is under-represented - or even invisible - in Art History. To remedy this, Visual Anthropology is proving to be a relevant way of showing, through images (still or moving), these heterodox practices that generally contradict the prescriptions laid down by the religious authorities. I will present a number of strategies available to the visual anthropologist - from taking pictures to disseminating them - to bear witness to several types of interreligious sharing, based on different principles: simultaneity, contiguity, alternation or succession (before / after), superimposition or conversion of spaces, staging interfaith dialogue (poly-rituality), etc. My approach will be based on a selection of pictures showing spaces, pilgrims, rituals, religious markers, architectural elements, inscriptions, iconography, etc. The case studies will focus on pilgrimages in the Euro-Mediterranean world.

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Paper short abstract:

One of the most visited pilgrimage site in the world, Saint Anthony in Padua, has a peculiarity: few social studies refer to this phenomenon in present times. By means of a set of pictures this presentation aims to show how devotion is expressed by Singhalese and by Eritrean migrant communities

Paper long abstract:

One of the most visited sanctuary in the world, Saint Anthony in Padua (only second for number of pilgrims after the Virgin of Guadalupe) has a peculiarity: whereas studies on the ancient devotion to the saint and its manifestations abound in quality and quantity, few socio-anthropological studies refer to the phenomenon in present times. The contemporary panorama is indeed rich in terms of numbers, processions, confraternities, celebrations, ex-voto, exhibitions, charities, and presence in the arts, in the media and in social forums. In short, devotion to the saint is not fading away and his sanctuary is a repository of traditions, which are by no means fixed once and for all, being constantly reinvented in the light of the ever-increasing mobility due to migration. By means of a set of pictures produced by the author and her research group, this presentation aims to show the ways devotion is expressed and performed by Singhalese and by Eritrean migrant communities. It is a narration through images, which is not directly translatable into words since it refers to dance, dress, music, food, conviviality. The intention underlying the single images rather than the aesthetic aspect is the focus of the presentation. Such intention will be enhanced by the photo-elicitation technique, which gives voice to the research subjects, who actively explore with the researcher the meanings attributed to situations, behavior and objects, bringing to the centre of the ethnographic research “photographs and other visual media which become data rather than illustrate it” (Salazar 2012).

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how images and photographic representations are involved during the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Shen Ndou (Saint Anthony) in Laç, northern Albania. We integrate images and their perception in the pilgrims' veneration with images captured by researchers

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how images and photographic representations are involved during the pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of Shen Ndou (Saint Anthony) in Laç, northern Albania. This is one of the most popular pilgrimages for Albanians, who visit the site in the hundreds of thousands each year between 12 and 13 June. In this context, images and their perception are fully integrated into the veneration of the Saint from two different angles. Iconographic representations and images of Shen Ndou are often venerated by Albanians seeking contact to be healed and blessed. Meanwhile, pilgrims use smartphone cameras as a means of spreading the holiness of Shen Ndou. Many people place photos of their loved ones from their phones on the statue of the saint. Pilgrims take photos and selfies to witness and attest to the authenticity of their experience, while video calls allow those who cannot attend the pilgrimage to do so. Shen Ndou’s sainthood is thus broadcast virtually, averaged through media tools and transposed on virtual platforms. The image thus takes on a polysemic meaning throughout the pilgrimage, even as the researchers (ourselves) capture this experience through images, thus proposing a third representative dimension of sainthood.