Techno-Nostalgic Forms of Digital Pilgrimage: Online Journeys into and out of Mount Athos

Abstract

In further developing Helland’s model axis towards new typologies and fields of ‘digital religion’ ( Siouda, 2021 ), this article proposes one such dynamic arena of investigation to be that of ‘digital pilgrimages’ as part of the wider dialectic between ‘pilgrimage tourism’ and ‘digital monasticism’ focusing on the ‘ Athos Digital Heritage’ project. Under the perspective of pilgrimage studies, this article develops Helland’s axis from ‘religion online’ to the more specific type of pilgrimage online (referring to online journeys into the landscape by following designed digitised paths to the monasteries via their objects and art as referential points, or material ‘ remembrances’); and from ‘online religion’ towards the more specific online pilgrimage (referring to participation in both liturgical and pedagogical sessions with monks, as well as, in both private and collective online rituals and face-to-face online interactions). In developing Helland’s axis towards the formulation of experience that emerges out of the digital ‘landscape’, the article focuses on experiencing pilgrimage online as an outward output towards the material history of the ‘world’, while online pilgrimage as an inward path towards intersubjective ‘spiritual’ experiences of the ‘self’. The article ethnographically shows how the dialectics between these movements emerge out of the digitisation of the Athonian ‘ landscape’ and its socio-materiality as a place of remembrance (Ingold), giving pilgrimage a techno-nostalgic form by transferring its visual representation from its physical dimensions to the reinvented virtual metaverse of tourism pilgrimage online.