Water Broadcasting Secret Stations was a performative action and public intervention devised as a water divining and mapping event at The Fairfield, Skibbereen, Co. Cork as part of the Skibbereen Arts Fectival 2019. Participants learned to use metal divining rods, hazel rods, and pendulums to locate underground water in a three-hundred-year-old public market space, using their bodies as antennas to tune into the earth’s invisible forces.

Findings were mapped through mark-making with chalk and charcoal directly onto the ground, then translated into a large-scale drawing on paper. Developed after working with local water diviners in West Cork, the project drew from vernacular and folk practices of water divining—traditionally used to locate water sources for dwellings.

This speculative act, as Seamus Heaney described, brought “uncontrollable electric signals, water suddenly broadcasting through a green aerial its secret station.” By reimagining water divining as an artistic and participatory action, the work invited participants to engage with the landscape’s hidden currents, blending the practical with the poetic.