Page 186 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Breath, Technology, Making of Community 171

complex where its 300 communitarian members live and thousands cir-
culate every week, the premises of radio Canção Nova and TV Canção
Nova, an audiovisual department called DAVI, a gigantic supermarket
area called Fundação John Paul II that sells Canção Nova’s media produc-
tions such as tapes, video sermons, CDs, books, magazines, and clothes,
various broadcasting studios, two small chapels, a specific area for inter-
cession and exorcism, and a monastery of the medieval Poor Clares. Apart
from the main mother house, Canção Nova runs 19 other filial houses
called casas de missão (mission houses) distributed all over Brazil, four of
which are within the State of São Paulo, and abroad in the United States,
in Fátima (Portugal), Rome, and Israel. In 2005, Canção Nova inaugu-
rated a gigantic gymnasium with a capacity of 70,000. On weekends,
religious and nonreligious holidays (such as carnival) organized excur-
sions arrive in Canção Nova from all parts of Brazil and neighboring
countries. Although Canção Nova is permanently open to visitors, it
charges an entrance fee of 10 Reais during shows, which normally run
from Thursday to Sunday. Participants are invited to bring a tent and
camp in the large lanes of the site. As a community, Canção Nova fash-
ions, as it were, a town within a town. Apart from the dormitories and the
refectory, it also owns a medical and dentist post, a primary school for the
children of the community, a theology school for lay and vocational mem-
bers, a hotel, a camping area, and even a hairdresser. In the back part of
the complex, there is a big vegetable garden for the community’s own sup-
ply extending beyond plain sight toward the Serra.
Especially since the 1990s, there has been a significant change in the
town’s human and infrastructure. From a predominantly residential and
rural town, Cachoeira Paulista is now developing a substantial commercial
form of economy. Just outside the grounds there are a good number of
hostels, cafes, and restaurants to cater to the weekly surge of travelers.
Local residents have also made space in their private condominiums to
house last-minute pilgrims. Religious merchandisers set up their stalls,
outside and around the ground’s limits.
In general, Cachoeira Paulista is well reputed for its many natural flu-
vial systems. Being one of the countries with the highest use of hydroelec-

tric energy worldwide, electricity supplies in Brazil are highly dependent
on the levels of precipitation provided by seasonal rains. Strikingly, Canção
Nova uses its watery surroundings to foster the relationship between elec-
tricity and spirituality, between the energizing power of the “flame of
Pentecost” and a techno-electronic universe. These overlaps rely on
emblematic descriptions used by Catholic Charismatics to account for the
richly somatic experiences of contact with the spirit. They often use
electricity-derived terms such as “warm voltages,” “radiances,” or “impulses”