Environmental knowledge and holistic Weltanschauung meet and clash at boundaries of radiesthesia. Drawing on the aesthetics of knowledge, the project investigates this system of knowledge in its tense relation to scientific innovations. With an interdisciplinary view on the entangled histories of knowledge and media, it focuses on visualizations as epistemic tools, and their situated contextualization, shifting through magic, science and art.
At the turn to the twentieth century, innovations such as experiments on radioactivity and the distribution of electricity in households both fascinated and unsettled society. In reaction, a world was envisioned full of rays beyond the observable, as empty signifiers to be discovered and visualized. Referring back to detecting minerals in mining, radiesthesia developed into a popular system of knowledge that both adapted and criticized modern science. Within new associations and journals, experts designed scales and constituted methods of detection and shielding — explaining sensitivity to perceive healing or harmful radiation. Parallel to developments in science and psychology, both theologians and scientists debated this turn as either science or quackery.
The body became a measuring instrument, aided by a rod or pendulum to perform examinations, which were documented in photographs, maps, drawings and publications. With this popularization and an emphasis on bodily sensitivity as research, these practical experiences also became accessible to autodidacts. Women began to develop their own methods of visualizing observations on the environment, the body and health. Some of their drawings have gained wider recognition as art in recent exhibitions, exemplifying processes of popularization, demarcation or (dis-)approval of competing forms of knowledge.
The project combining archival research, interviews and participant observations with an analysis of exhibitions.