---
title: "Artforum article explores a Missouri group that studied telekinesis"
url: "https://usubjects.com/article/suburban-sublime-artforum-1558"
updated: "2026-02-19T16:01:43.917Z"
description: "Photographer Shannon Taggart’s article uncovers the quirky history of the Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT), a small Missouri‑based group founded in 1961 by poet John G. Neihardt that sought to test whether emotional rapport could cause objects to move on their own. After Neihardt’s death, teacher‑engineer Tom Richards continued the work in his home lab, recording alleged psychokinetic events with a motion‑triggered Super‑8 camera, and the newly released documents and family snapshots invite readers to explore the community rather than settle the phenomenon’s reality."
sources: ["https://www.artforum.com/features/sorrat-paranormal-research-archive-shannon-taggart-1234742319/"]
licence: "All rights reserved"
---

# Artforum article explores a Missouri group that studied telekinesis

Published: 2026-02-18  
Source: [Anomalist](https://www.artforum.com/features/sorrat-paranormal-research-archive-shannon-taggart-1234742319/)

### Overview  

Photographer and writer **Shannon Taggart** has released a newly digitized archive that sheds light on the **Society for Research on Rapport and Telekinesis (SORRAT)**, a little‑known Missouri group that pursued the idea that emotional rapport could move objects without physical contact. Founded in 1961 by poet‑scholar **John G. Neihardt**, best known for *Black Elk Speaks*, the society operated for over a decade before folding into the private experiments of teacher‑engineer **Tom Richards**. Taggart’s article, published in *Artforum* on February 1, 2026, frames the material not as proof of paranormal power but as a cultural artifact that bridges mid‑century literary mysticism, avant‑garde art practices, and grassroots scientific curiosity.

### Historical Roots  

Neihardt, whose 1932 work helped shape the Beat and New Age movements, believed that consciousness could extend beyond the body—a conviction deepened by his own near‑death experiences and the tragic accidental death of his wife, Mona. In the early 1960s he gathered a small circle of friends and students in Columbia, Missouri, to test whether **“rapport”**—a felt emotional connection—could generate **psychokinetic** effects. The group’s name, SORRAT, was deliberately playful, echoing the Latin *soror* (sister) while hinting at the absurdity of its ambitions. Archival photos show Neihardt holding Black Elk’s drum in his study, a symbolic gesture linking his literary fascination with Native American spirituality to the experimental agenda of the society.

### Experiments and the Richards Continuation  

After Neihardt’s death in 1973, **Tom Richards**, a local high‑school teacher and electrical engineer, inherited the group’s modest equipment and moved the work into his home laboratory. Between 1966 and 1969 Richards and his wife Elaine recorded a series of **motion‑triggered Super‑8 films** documenting phenomena such as a levitating clown doll, a “masked Ouija board” session, and an “observation box” where a suspended object appeared to shift under the gaze of participants. The newly released footage, accompanied by family snapshots, captures the modest, almost theatrical nature of the experiments. In a brief interview, Richards remarked, “We were never trying to prove anything to the scientific establishment; we were exploring a shared imagination, a kind of collective play.”

### Cultural Context  

Taggart positions SORRAT within a broader lineage of **mythopoetic art collectives** that blur the line between research and performance. She draws parallels to **Marcel Duchamp’s** readymades, **John Cage’s** aleatoric compositions, and the **Fluxus** movement’s emphasis on “radical play.” Like those artists, SORRAT’s members treated the laboratory as a stage, allowing **distributed agency**—the idea that objects, participants, and even unseen forces could co‑author an outcome. The society’s focus on invisible transmission anticipates contemporary discussions in network theory and participatory art, suggesting that its legacy may be more conceptual than empirical.

### Looking Forward  

The archive’s public release invites scholars of literature, art history, and the history of science to reassess a marginal episode that once risked being dismissed as a footnote in Neihardt’s biography. While the footage does not settle the question of whether **psychokinesis** exists, it offers a rare glimpse into a mid‑century community that earnestly combined **poetry, engineering, and ritual**. As Taggart writes, “The value of SORRAT lies not in its results but in its willingness to imagine a world where feeling can move matter.” Researchers and curators are already planning exhibitions that will place the Super‑8 reels alongside contemporaneous avant‑garde works, underscoring the society’s role as an inadvertent **art collective** as much as a paranormal research group.

## Provenance

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