Page 193 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

178 Maria José A. de Abreu

received from the Spirit, by reading the testimonies that arrived at his altar
table via electronic means. “Alleluias” and “Amens” added rhythm to the
readings. As the circuit speeded up, a swelling vocalization arose, drama-
tized by the roaring expression of unintelligible sounds of speaking in
tongues. The body partook in the interactive nature of the celebration.
The gesture of the laying-on of hands suggested a community of chained
bodies integrated into a moving circle of light. The body of the medium,
however, did not attempt to pursue a communication between two worlds.
Rather, the body—like space, and like the TV medium—was employed as
a medium of energy circulation and transmission. In other words, every-
thing in the setting, body, space, media participated in this movement of
transmissibility. The laying-on of hands aimed to restore harmony in the
body, compensating for some emotional, physical, or spiritual lack. Placing
and alternating hands on oneself and another individual, as Padre Edmilson
asked his audiences to do, further reinforced the contact established
between one’s personal body and the collective body where the priest
worked as a kind of power source on/off switch. Circulation and relation
were, therefore, the terms that worked, literally, as the main conductors of
the ceremony. The body of the believer and potential donor extended, and
identified with, the technological while inscribing the transactions of cha-
risma ultimately manifested in the form of donations. Insofar as charity is,
according to St. Paul the highest charisma—the gift that overflows
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itself —donations did not refer to a disembodied act of giving but to a
condition of being gifted, an aspect that, as we have seen, goes through the
body. The act of giving was more a sign of possession than of dispossession.
As Charismatics put it, “one exists in charity.” Or to recall Mauss, to give
is to give oneself, hence to further propel the circulation of the “gift.”

Technological Self-Awareness

One would expect that in order to sustain its own mystification in religious
as well as economic terms, Canção Nova would go on erasing its techno-

logical traces. Yet, at first glance, quite the opposite takes place. Far from
concealing, Canção Nova constantly takes us into the back rooms, and the
normally invisible off-stage scenery, so that viewers can be aware (on “live
transmission”) of both its material (technical equipment, new premises,
furnishings, etc.) and humanitarian world. Donors, in particular, have a
chance to access the flows of capital, that is, the financial balance of trans-
actions in real time as Canção Nova incessantly reveals the percentage level
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in the race to the 100 percent monthly liquidations. The daily exposure