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The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory

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The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory Title: The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory Author: Oana Mateescu How to cite this article: Mateescu, Oana. 2015. The Medium of the ”ody: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory. Martor 20: 13-24. Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Ţăranului Român (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant) URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/768-2/ Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review) is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue among these disciplines. Martor review is published by the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Its aim is to provide, as widely as possible, a rich content at the highest academic and editorial standards for scientific, educational and (in)formational goals. Any use aside from these purposes and without mentioning the source of the article(s) is prohibited and will be considered an infringement of copyright. Martor Revue d’“nthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain est un journal académique en système peer-review fondé en 1996, qui se concentre sur l’anthropologie visuelle et culturelle, l’ethnologie, la muséologie et sur le dialogue entre ces disciplines. La revue Martor est publiée par le Musée du Paysan Roumain. Son aspiration est de généraliser l’accès vers un riche contenu au plus haut niveau du point de vue académique et éditorial pour des objectifs scientifiques, éducatifs et informationnels. Toute utilisation au-delà de ces buts et sans mentionner la source des articles est interdite et sera considérée une violation des droits de l’auteur. Martor is indexed by EBSCO and CEEOL. The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory Oana Mateescu Lecturer at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Bucharest ABSTRACT KEYWORDS his essay discusses the experiments carried out between 1909-1913 by German ectoplasm photography, indexicality, psychologist and psychical researcher Albert von Schrenck-Notzing on the phe- body, medium, psychical science nomena of materialization, involving the biological shapes and images excreted by the body of a female subject (in this case, Eva Carrière) who acted, at the same time, as a spiritual and technological medium. It underlines the indexicality of visual and tactile evidence as it is graphically and photographically recorded by the scientist. In the psychic laboratory, science is deeply anchored in the physiol- ogy of the female body, embracing animism and vitalism as a philosophy of life, while also veering close to eroticism as a somatic mode of knowledge. magine a room bathed in red light, Phenomena of Materialization: A Con- multiple cameras lashing simul- tribution to the Investigation of Mediumistic Itaneously, a naked, writhing female Teleplastics (Schrenck-Notzing 1923, body, a scientist whose ingers are sticky henceforth PM), the work that records with vaginal luids and, at the center of it four years (1909-1913) of such experiments all, the “living” matter – strands, veils and with physical materialization, is the kind masses of it extruding from the oriices of of document that actively encourages the the medium and then lowing, creeping, suspension of disbelief. How this is achieved jumping and even morphing into objects, – by means of which sensory, graphic and organs and images. We are in the very photographic modalities – is a question that thick of materialization, a space where brings to the forefront a genre of visual and science, spiritualism and eroticism are tactile evidence grounded in indexicality. It uncomfortably exposed to one other by also forces attention to the self-relexivity of the gaze of the photographic camera. photography as a technology of embodiment More precisely, we are in the early 20th that strives to grat materiality (of bodies century “psychic laboratory” of Baron and biological life) onto immateriality (of Albert von Schrenck-Notzing (1862- spirits and the unconscious). 1929), a German psychologist and famous Photography itself has always wavered psychical researcher, who is in the midst between iconicity and indexicality as of a scientiic experiment devoted to the discursive claims to the truth. Used here study of “teleplastic structures” produced in their Peircean sense (see also below) by the medium Eva Carrière (pseudonym as relations of resemblance, respectively of Marthe Béraud) under the guidance of causality and contiguity between signs Madame Juliette Bisson, her companion and the objects they represent, iconicity and mentor. and indexicality cover an interpretive 13 Oana Mateescu continuum that takes photographs from a plethora of forces, energies, vibrations, images to proofs. It is the latter sense that waves and rays. Late 19th-century discoveries was central to Schrenck-Notzing’s psychical – electromagnetic waves (1888), X-rays research – not only because phenomena of (1895), uranium radioactive emissions materialization had been so oten exposed (1897), wireless waves (1899), N-rays as hoaxes (and were, thus, in dire need of (1903) – turned matter itself into “a kind scientiic redemption), but also because of of phantasm” (Tifany 2000, 169), severing the eminently intimate (and, thus, causal the links between materiality, visibility and and indexical) link between the medium’s transmission. New iconographies of matter female body and the mysterious substance allowed the visualization of previously it externalized and shaped into animate inscrutable and imponderable phenomena: forms. just as the microscope had generated debates about degrees of sub-visibility and invisibility (Wilson 1995), radiography and, ........ of course, photography reinforced each other in the creation of a pictorial physics From Spirits to Animate Matter of degrees of materiality (Wilder 2011; Smajic 2010). he physics of this intangible “he medium is not only the unconscious matter – persuasively illustrated by Oliver producer of phantasms, but is the physiological Lodge’s “etherial bodies” (Raia 2007), source of material for making them visible.” William Crookes’ “radiant matter” or (PM, 282) Cromwell Varley’s “electrical spiritualism” (Noakes 2008) – allowed the mind to By late 19th century, and particularly escape the physical conines of the brain ater 1882, when the international Society and to propagate as vibrations of diferent for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded frequencies into the ether. Telepathy, in in London, a sizable group of scientists particular, carried over the vocabulary of and philosophers were busily displacing brain-waves and cerebral radiation into spiritualism from the realm of religion and a “photographic model of consciousness” superstition into that of science and natural (Enns 2013, 182). Radiating brain waves law. SPR members – philosophers and could be recorded by thought-photography, psychologists (F.H. Myers, Henri Bergson, a practice that even did away with the William James), physicists (William camera and the lens: thoughts as visual Crookes, William F. Barrett, Oliver Lodge), impressions could be directly imprinted physiologists and biologists (Charles onto sensitive photographic plates and Richet, Hans Driesch) – were all engaged in emulsions. (Technological) Media replaced trespassing boundaries. his was a ground- (spiritual) mediums. breaking work that entailed the creation Undoubtedly, new communication of new vocabularies and instruments, technologies – telegraphy in particular (Otis the imposition of laboratory standards 2001, 180-219) – did much to promote this onto the séance and the elaboration of fantasy of a dematerialized, instantaneous lexible theoretical frameworks that and apparently unmediated community could accommodate phenomena such as of thought. Indeed, the new psychical hypnotism, ectoplasmic materialization, science relied extensively on the parasitical telepathy or telekinesis (hurschwell 2001; relationship that modern spiritualism had Wolfram 2009). already established with technology. As he new relationship between the Kittler (1987, 111; see also Gunning 2007) psychical and the physical was made argues, it was the emergence of media plausible by the redeinition of matter as such as photography that promptly called 14 The Medium of the Body: Photography and the Senses in the Psychic Laboratory But animism was a decidedly slippery concept. Made famous by anthropologist Edward Tylor (1871) as a form of primitive thought that mixed up spirit and matter 1) This particular argu- (spirit is not the monopoly of humans, but ment in no way detracts from the potential of resides also in animals, plants or objects), spiritualism as a reser- animism was pejoratively understood as a voir of religious experi- ence. On the contrary, cultural survival and evolutionary remnant despite the Protestant of bygone times2. German animists emphasis on meaning and inner belief at the sidestepped this recent semantic baggage expense of form and performance, religion – and traced the concept back to its original then and now – thrives usage by 18th-century chemist and vitalist upon mediation. Communication with philosopher G. E. Stahl. In this sense, divinity or the spiritual animism came to denote opposition to both realm is enhanced by the participation of spiritualist and scientiic materialist camps, technology: if photog- raphy, audio-cassettes and, particularly so, by its association to
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