Sam Stewart: There Are Cathedrals Everywhere, For Those With The Eyes To See
There Are Cathedrals Everywhere, for Those With The Eyes To See is a 3D printed thurible constructed from a vape with five panels depicting the Elden Ring character Goldmask.
‘This volume is indeed for those who lie defeated by history and the present, in the most general and most tragic sense.’
— Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic
Inspired by Federico Campagna's 2018 book ‘Technic and Magic’, the thurible attempts to hold a flame up to where, amidst the unnarratability of the present and the breakdown of consensus reality, the disillusioned are turning to in a hunt for meaning. Each panel is posed to reflect one of Federico Campagna’s five stages of using ‘Magic’ as a means for understanding reality.
In ‘Technic and Magic’ Federico argues we are facing a metaphysical crisis where the logic of our current reality system he terms ‘Technic’ is exhausting itself and reality feels as if it is coming apart. Technic defines the parameters for what exists, what ‘is’ and what ‘is not’, determining the ‘fundamental metaphysical axioms’ from which the ordering of our world and contemporary reality emerge. At present it feels as if Technic’s logic is running out. We are gasping for air and new ideas and individuals are living on the edge of nothingness, having to fight to reconstruct a reality and presence for themselves.
From Technic’s limit on what is possible arises ‘Magic’, an alternative reality system proposed by Federico. This is not magic in the general sense and possesses distinct qualities as a reality system - but draws heavily on magical and mystical thinking. He references Italian philosopher and anthropologist Ernest de Martino, who in his 1948 book ‘Il Mondo Magico’ examines how archaic societies employ magic as a tool to defend themselves from the risk of endless catastrophe and reconstruct reality as a whole.
In de Martino’s words: ‘When a certain sensible horizon enters a crisis, the main risk is constituted by the crumbling of each and every limit: everything can become everything, that is to say: nothingness emerges. But magic … intervenes to put a stop to the emerging chaos, and to resolve it into an order. Thus, from this angle, magic becomes a tool to restore horizons that have entered a crisis. And with the demiurgery that characterises it, it recuperates for the humans the very world that they were about to lose.’
For the development of There Are Cathedrals Everywhere, For Those With The Eyes To See this quote was key in understanding how magic has been used to intervene in the face of chaos, providing order and restoring horizons. My interest here encompasses Federico’s conception of Magic and the precise definition and methodology that comes with it - but also the many individuals who are unconsciously following the same model he lays out. The people who when faced with the annihilating force of Technic, the worsening of material conditions and the chaos of narrative entropy, find salvation in the many splintering forms of magic and mysticism available to them.
The internet has been an incubator for this process where, as outlined in Nate Sloan’s ‘DJ UMBERTO ECCO 2K MANIFESTO’, context collapse and the flattening effect of social media allows for new connections to be formed. Ancient belief systems are fragmented and remixed into new ways of understanding the world and constructing reality.
From New Age Spiritual practices, to the burgeoning number of trad caths and neo-pagans, all the way down to the Landian numerologists and gnostic memers, mystical means of understanding the world are growing. Perhaps most comparable to the construction of reality is ‘reality-shifting’ which, discussed at length on Pneumatic Materials, is the immensely popular (with the hashtag garnering over 3 Billion views on tiktok) practice of shifting your subconscious to an alternate ‘desired’ reality. At every level people invent new means of understanding a fractured present as the feed becomes a petri-dish for these beliefs to sprout, be remixed and grow. As artist Harris Rosenblum puts: ‘Reality feels shattered, why not take up the shards and mosaic a new world into being.’
I know that I have made my fair share of wojakified spiritual symbols.
I Saw The Image and The Image Was Me, 2022, 01.38 (Extract)
created using every image I have posted from the age of 13
On my YouTube feed hours long lore-videos on Elden Ring and Goldmask brush up against discussions of kabbalah, early christian sects and sufi mysticism. It's from this algorithmic space that the references for this sculpture arise, collapsing video game lore, orthodox religious objects and vape artefacts.
Borrowing a term from artist and writer Jak Ritger this work is an attempt to ‘devirtualize’ the ways beliefs are being formed to make sense of a fractured reality. Inspired by the practice of Harris Rosenblum, 3D printing is the methodology of this devirtualizing process translating these ideas from the screen into physical space.
The 5 panels of the thurible show the figure of Goldmask rendered in 3D printed resin. He is an ascetic monk from Elden Ring who, within the game, moves beyond language communicating with The Greater Will with pose, standing for days facing the Erdtree in communion. Goldmask’s move beyond language can be understood as reflecting Federico’s focus on the ineffable, which forms the centre of Magic’s reality system. For Federico, a focus on the ineffable leads to a reality being woven together where language, existence and essence, life and death are deeply and meaningfully intertwined.
On the five panels Goldmask becomes a narrator for Federico’s Magic reality-system translating the 5 hypostases (the underlying principles of a reality) of Magic into his own purely symbolic language of poses. Within Elden Ring Goldmask comes to the conclusion that the Golden Order (the overarching philosophical and theological movement found in the game) is flawed. Goldmask sought to supplant the Golden Order with his own set of beliefs proposing an alternative and through this process ‘physically made the option for another reality’. Goldmask here tells the same story as Campagna, that ‘we must imagine a new set of reality principles that would allow for a new range of the possible to emerge.’
There Are Cathedrals Everywhere, For Those With The Eyes To See was shown as part of Kawaii Agency’s ‘Flop Era’ show at Filet Space in November. For details of this show and an overview of the curatorial project see Günseli Yalcinkayas profile in Dazed.
LARP as reality therapy
Following the creation of the thurible and its exhibition in Kawaii Agencies Flop Era, I was invited by London based art collective K-Fabe to performed with the thurible at their LARP (live-action role play) event, organised with the fashion label Marie Luder and directed by artist David Varhegyi.
Titled MONO-MYTH and billed as a night of LARP, hyperstition, worldbuilding, performance and mythopoesis, LARP performers and musicians took over a church in North London styled in outfits created by Marie Luder. The event placed the attendee as the protagonist guiding them down a fantastical path where they interact with various Archetypal characters who act as catalysts for the development of their personal stories.
For the event I was styled by Marie Lueder in a tactical Gregorian monk-esque outfit created for the LARP. Accompanying a mix of a live organ, drone, a hurdy-gurdy and spoken word I circled the space swinging the thurible and releasing smoke, taking on the role of a priest during liturgy.
Whilst I have previously written about the political worldbuilding potential for LARP’s focusing on Roblox political roleplay groups, this was my first delve into and participation in IRL LARPing.
In this previous piece on Roblox LARPs I drew on Joshua Citarella’s writing on Irony Politics and Gen Z, I discussed how the world building that goes into a LARP offers individuals escapism from political systems that alienate them and new political imaginations outside the Overton window. But the model of LARP as a tool to escape alienating systems might also be able to be used here. When considered with Federico’s writing in mind, LARPing can offer individuals ‘reality therapy’ by providing the chance to, if only temporarily, escape the crush of Technic’s logic and a system that alienates them.
A LARP is a portal providing a space for fiction to take place and alternative worlds to be constructed. This collective world-building allows for new ways of understanding reality to be formed by its participants, who can then take what is learnt or understood from a LARP forward into their everyday existence. This is not necessarily a remedy for the crisis of imagination felt today but perhaps a tool to form pockets of resistance.
Federico speaks of ‘initiation’ as a means of taking on Magic as a reality system. This process resembles a self-directed theurgy to transform one's existence and ‘consider one’s own linguistic self (i.e. one’s linguistic identities) as the equivalent of a vessel through which it is possible to allow the ineffable to shine’ changing the frame through which one views the world. Campagna understands the process of ‘initiation’ as a chance to ‘break away from the socialized space and the historical time to which they used to belong’, mirroring a LARP’s ability to act as a portal to another world.
Magic’s initiation also ‘implies a movement outside of Technic’s perfectly mapped space/time’ allowing for a ‘movement that is as much a new way of seeing the world as a new way of being in the world’. With K-Fabe’s LARP in mind this was most interesting to me, how through performance and worldbuilding the attendees placed at the centre could be presented with a world outside of Technic’s authority of reality. Alongside other performers, LARPing provided an opportunity to craft an initiation rite of our own.
With There Are Cathedral’s Everywhere, For Those With Eyes To See I’m not interested in offering a concrete viewpoint or solution, I am fumbling in the dark, just like everyone else. But by translating this magical understanding of the world into a speculative aesthetic and sensory experience, I am hoping that as the smoke rises up an individual within the gallery space or observing the performance can understand and empathise with this view of the world and perhaps, if even for a second, share it.