MJBurchick

ONLINE PREMIERE Ora Et Labora LINK IN BIO Inspired by the craft beer market, a group of Catholic monks in Spencer, Massachusetts, produces America’s first “Trappist-certified” beer. This venture provides financial stability to the monastery but also presents challenges to the monks' austere lifestyles. The monks navigate these trials with grace and humility by living out their motto “Ora et labora,” Latin for “work and prayer.” Written by @MJBurchick Directed/Produced by @MJBurchick @JenaBurchick Executive Producer @nkdigitalcave Associate Producers @KyleDeitz @zachtrees @dan.tinez DP @KyleDeitz Additional Camera @dan.tinez Production Sound @zachtrees Sound Design and Mix @Iamtheredcoat Color Correction: Stephen Schuyler Massive thank you’s to @Marylandpublictv @digitalcave @Serious_grip_baltimore @36seagulls and our donors, family, and friends!

The Digital Exhibition of Felt Presence is live! The culmination of two years of graduate work, the website explores miraculous images, relics of the saints, Catholic visual history, and our contemporary media landscape in the era of AI. I’m also excited to share my interview discussing the exhibition with Michael O’Neill on his radio show “The Miracle Hunter,” hosted by EWTN. You can find links to both in my bio, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

I am very excited to share the publication of a journal article co-written with scholar of religion Diana Pasulka (@dwpasulka ) on using AI tools to reframe the visual history of the religious transcendent. The article explores the ethics of AI imagemaking, alongside AI’s use as diagnostic tools for deciphering internet biases. We raced to write this paper, with expedited peer-review and constant updates right up to the deadline, to try and stay on top of the pace of the AI art space. You can read the article and learn more about the Noo Icons project as it develops via the links in my bio!

Tonight! My short film "The Revelation of the Magi" premieres as part of the MdFF's Tall Stories Vertical Showcase. This 2-minute animation was produced in 2022 using Deforum Stable Diffusion, an opt-out AI animation model that aims to develop a more ethical approach to image-making. My current body of research uses AI image-making tools to depict the history of interactions with non-human intelligence. Revelation of the Magi was an early experiment, showing how these events are understood in the era of internet-based images, collapsing the archival record into uncanny and awe-inspiring forms that mirror the source testimony of religious experiencers. Logline: “Adapted from a third-century Syriac text, recently translated into English for the first time, The Revelation of the Magi re-imagines the classic Christmas story of the desert journey to the birth of Jesus.” Tickets available via the @mdffparkway website and link in bio!

Today we buried my grandfather at 93 years old. Last week, we buried my grandmother-in-law at 89 years old. During this Holy Week, we are meditating on their lives having truly lived the Gospel and dedicating themselves to service to their partners, their families, and their communities. We reflect on beloved memories and the influence their long and storied lives will have on us, and we are grateful that they gave so graciously of themselves.

Ora Et Labora, @jenaburchick and I's, exploration of American monastery beer brewing, will have its online premiere alongside a @marylandpublictv screening, this weekend! It's been a long road to get here but we are so excited to finally share it far and wide! As always, this film could not have been made without the support of our wonderful crew and the gracious access that the St. Joseph's Abbey community afforded to us. Broadcast Screenings: Saturday, March 28th at 8:00 PM. The film will also receive overnight encore airings at 12:00AM and 3:00 AM. The digital stream for the film will go live sometime on Sunday, March 29th. Synopsis: Inspired by the growth of the American craft beer movement, a group of Catholic monks in Spencer, Massachusetts, produces America’s first “Trappist-certified” beer. This historically European tradition signals growth opportunities for financially insecure monastic communities looking to preserve their unique way of life. Committed to vows of poverty, stability, and obedience, the rigors of the craft beer market demand a public presence that challenges their austere lifestyles. The monks navigate these trials with grace and humility, informed by centuries of dedication to their motto “Ora et labora,” a Latin phrase for “work and prayer.”

I was proud to represent @towsonemf alongside fellow TU alum, MFIC, and IATSE members during MD Film Day in Annapolis, advocating in support of the DECADE Act. You can follow @mdfilmcoalition for more information and to learn how you can lend support towards film in Maryland! There are more forthcoming bills this season, so keep an eye out.

This Tuesday, November 11th: If you are interested in esoteric aspects of folk and emergent religions, deep cut Catholicism, or overlooked and undervalued aspects of Cold War History - boy, do I have the online class for you. And better yet, I’m giving a presentation on my original and secondary research into the subject! My talk in @dwpasulka ’s class on the Marian Apparitions at Fátima and Garabandal offers a historical survey of the material culture of Marian Apparitions, culminating with a review of the photography from the 1917 Fatima apparitions. We will discuss how folk devotion and belief both inspire and contradict institutional power, and chart how experiencer narratives are shaped by these forces, determining how future events will be contextualized and understood. All of Diana’s scholarship and online courses have been hugely influential to my research and art making, and it’s an honor and delight to be invited to speak to her class, alongside Christopher Moreland. I hope you’ll join us! Link is in my bio. If you can’t afford the online class, I will be developing this content into a podcast in the near future, so stay tuned for more. The above photo comes from my recreations of the original glass plate negatives documenting the 1917 Fátima events, currently on view at the @decontemporary museum. I turned these negatives into third-class relics of Saints Jacinta and Francisco Marto as part of my MFA Thesis Exhibition, so that viewers may encounter the saints as both art and sacred object, mirroring the presence of saints’ reliquarys in museums globally. /p/apparitions-of-the-virgin-mary-fatima-garabandal

In conjunction with the @decontemporary show, half of my exhibition Felt Presence will be on view at the Loyola University @julioartgallery as part of their juried Art and Spirituality show. The show runs October 15th through November 19th, with a reception on October 23rd from 6-8pm. These pieces explore Catholic material culture and folk devotional practices surrounding relics, pilgrimage, and ritual. I discovered a story without an end and brought it to a conclusion in the gallery. I hope you’ll stop by to check it out, and I’m thankful to Megan Rook-Koepsel and her staff for their help, and curators @dschlapbach and @kerboey6539 for selecting the work!

On this day, October 13th, in 1917, the “sun danced in the sky” over Fatima, Portugal. Though 108 years have passed since those strange events, their resonance is still felt in the modern day. My installation artwork, Felt Presence, currently on view at the Delaware Contemporary Museum (@decontemporary ) as part of their 2025 Biennial “Art+AI”, imagines the Fatima narrative through new and uncanny technology. How do we photograph the impossible? And how might impossible images shape our imaginations? I’m excited to announce that a new essay informed by this body of work will be published in the Biennial’s Anthology, “Artifice: Implications for Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” I will also be discussing Felt Presence in a forthcoming online conference entitled “Divine Devices” hosted by the Society for the Anthropology of Religion on October 30th and 31st. More to come on all of that, but there are some links in my bio in the meantime. I’m grateful to @amyxhicks , @erica_loustau , and @marniebenney for their curation (some of their photos here), Morgan Hamilton for his inclusion of my essay and help installing, and my wife @jenaburchick for photographing the exhibition on her way home from her writing residency! Shout-outs to my friends @tara.youngborg , who is also playing the show, as well as @dwpasulka , whose influential book “Encounters” appears in the Reading Room for the exhibition!

I’m so pleased to share that my installation artworks Noo Icons and Felt Presence will be on view at the @decontemporary ’s 2025 Biennial Art+AI in Wilmington, DE from September 5th through December 28th. I will also be publishing a forthcoming new essay on the intersection of AI and Religion and “impossible images” in a collected anthology produced by the museum. There will be more dates and events to share in the coming days, but I hope you can see the show if you are in town! Read more about the show at the link in my bio. P.S. Congrats to my friend @tara.youngborg who will also be sharing work in the show!

I’m spending a few days at University of Dayton’s Marian Library, the largest collection of materials dedicated solely to the Virgin Mary. I was drawn here because of their archives related to Apparitions of the Virgin Mary, of which they house mostly materials related to unapproved or to-be-determined cases, as well as relics. My major research questions are looking at how folk expression and devotion brush up against formal dogma, and this archive is critically important for such a body of work. I’m grateful to Towson University’s CoLab grant and the University Film and Video Association’s Carole Fielding grant for funding portions of this work, as well as to the amazing hospitality of the librarians and archivists at University of Dayton. I have immensely enjoyed pouring over their material culture collections, including scapulars, medals, anomalous photographs taken at Shrine sites, a facsimile St John’s Bible (it’s huge!!!), and artwork. As the director of the library stated, “Catholics love our stuff.” There will be more to come from this research, but in the meantime, here is some stuff from the archives. Lemme know if you’re interested in anything in particular! I’ve got one more day before heading back to the Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics.