THE SACRED CODE IN DIGITAL CULTURE AND PERFORMATIVE PRACTICES

Abstract

Research objective. The aim of the study is to identify the mechanisms of preservation and transformation of ritual structures under conditions of secularization, with a particular focus on sacred time as a model of expectation, repetition, and deferred outcome. The research methodology is interdisciplinary, combining cultural studies, philosophical-aesthetic, and art historical approaches. The theoretical framework draws on Mircea Eliade’s concept of sacred time and Victor Turner’s theory of liminality, which allow ritual to be understood as a processual structure organizing experience. The study employs comparative and typological analysis of academic, performative, and digital practices, interpreted as forms of mediatized ritual. The scientific novelty of the research lies in refining and expanding the interpretation of ritual as a sacred code that continues to operate in contemporary culture under conditions of secularization and mediatization. Sacred time is examined not only as a category of religious experience but also as an analytical tool for the study of academic art forms and performative and digital practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The sacred code is analyzed as a stable cultural structure that continues to function in academic art forms and in the space of contemporary culture. Conclusions. Understanding the sacred code in digital culture and performative practices allows us to consider ritual not as an archaic relic or a fixed system of symbols, but as a stable cultural structure that preserves and transforms meanings and values in the conditions of modern culture, in particular in the situation of changes in artistic and media forms. The key mechanism for its preservation is sacred time, which appears as a special mode of experience based on repetition, deferred results and collective participation. It is this temporal structure that ensures the recognition of the sacred even with the loss of direct religious symbolism. The sacred code retains its efficacy in contemporary culture due to the stability of sacred temporal structures based on repetition, expectation, and the passage through liminal states. Academic and contemporary performative practices demonstrate not the disappearance of the sacred, but its transformation and adaptation to the conditions of a mediatized and digital reality.