This is a follow up from a previous blog entry, back in 2016.
For those interested in how magic is being written about and studied by academic scholars - across cultural-historical studies mainly - some brilliant books have come out over the last decade or two.
Here are some of the titles I have read, or simply spotted, ordered by date:

- James W. Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing with Fraud in The Age of Barnum (2001)
- Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (2004)
- Philipp Butterworth,  Magic on the Early English Stage (2005)
- Michael Mangan, Performing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring (2007)
- Coppa, Hass & Peck eds, Performing Magic on The Western Stage: From The Eighteenth Century to The Present (2008)
-Chris Goto-Jones, Conjuring Asia: Magic, Orientalism and The Making of the Modern World (2016)
 
On the relation between magic and cinema, see:

- Karen Beckman, Vanishing Women: Magic, Film and Feminism (2003)
- Matthew Solomon, Disappearing Tricks: Silent Film, Houdini, and The New Magic of The Twentieth Century (2010)
- Colin Williamson, Hidden In Plain Sight: An Archaeology of Magic and The Cinema (2015)

There are also brilliant free articles in the University of Huddersfield's Journal of Performance Magic.
 
And lastly, though not an academic study, I want to flag the recent book by A.Bandit, the name for the collaboration between conceptual artist Glenn Kaino and current Broadway magic star Derek Delguadio. It features great artworks and interesting interviews with John Baldessarri, Ricky Jay, Marina Abramovic,  Teller (my fave), and others.
- Glenn Kaino and Derek Delgaudio, A Secret Has Two Faces: The Collaborative Work of Glenn Kaino and Derek Delgaudio (2017)

Enjoy the academic study of magic
V

Happy to say that my text 'Dining Tables and Performances: or, The Labour of Illusion' has been published by the lovely FEAST journal, in an issue dedicated to the spaces in which we eat.
You can read my essay here, for free.
A tiny visual flavour of it below
Enjoy!
VG

Week 1 of rehearsals at the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, Brighton
(ACCA, I should mention, are generously supporting the development of the new show… watch this space)
 
I have been struck by the pleasure of time spent alone working on text and possible performance ideas. Not wishing to jinx future rehearsals, in the first week I was blessed with that most ideal of conditions for working: to be undisturbed. Undisturbed by crippling doubts and ‘second album syndrome’; undisturbed by social commitments, or the fear of missing out; undisturbed by admin duties.
This is largely due to Arts Council England supporting the development of the work. The project is still a fairly small operation, but having Arts Council backing has made all the difference.
The plan is to develop the project through continuous rehearsals and work-in-progress showings, between Jan and May 2018. All details will be available on this website, under the Gambini section. Producer Sally Rose and I are also concocting a likely plan for Edinburgh, ahead of touring the work in 2018-2019.
 
The show is likely to be called The Chore of Enchantment. It will be about disappointment and wonder, about political awakening and disillusionment, the job of the magician, being overwhelmed by the news, and experiencing ‘magician’s block’ (same as writer’s block, but for magicians).
Coming to a theatre near you… if you book it.
Please book it.

Yours,
VG

PS An early promo for the show is below. Video by Hugo Glendinning.
 

Such a simple yet 'profound' moment of confusion, in this short clip by magician Michael Carbonaro, subjecting unsuspecting members of the public to magic tricks.
Sitting at a bar, receiving a large drink, from which he proceeds to extract seemingly inexhaustible amounts of fruit, cocktail umbrellas, and even an egg seemingly containing a live parakeet, Michael Carbonaro's unsuspecting victim seems bemused and, in her own words, 'happy' at this oddly impossible feat (and Michael does a good job of feigning surprise himself).
The interesting moment comes at the end, when the magician reveals that A. This was all a magic trick, and B. You're on TV. The audience member (now turned into an audience member, we could say), seems less concerned about the television element, but does offer a great comment: firstly, she tells Michael how much she loves magic. Then, it slowly dawns on her what happened, and that the amazing bottomless drink must be a magic trick. 'That whole thing was magic?  You just did all this? That was not.... the drink?'
It's as though magic needs an author, a person responsible for these feats, a centre of animation, a puppet master, etc. Before the revelation, when Michael is haplessly performing as though magic was happening to him, the illusion is solid: something delightful and wonderful is happening here, who knows why... But as soon as the premise is clear - that someone is behind all this, making it happen intentionally - that's when we shift into magic.

Or something.

At least half of these blog musings are based on films and TV things that (I) relate to magic... Particularly films that play on the strange border between fiction and reality, artifice and misdirection, such as the superlative By the time it gets dark (2016), by Anocha Suwichakornpong.
A slow burner, that utterly toppled my brain by the end. It plays with the camera pulling back to 'show' the act of film-making at work, and through this simple device you're left utterly floating, not knowing how to read certain sections: is it a film within a film, or is it just... a film?
Suwichakornpong peels back not to gratify her or the viewers' intellect ('oooh, so clever'), but to forge a cinema experience where nothing is certain, everything is strange, because we are never really sure if what we're seeing is 'behind the scenes', or squarely in front of said scenes. It's the director's ability to keep this tension unresolved that I found so admirable: whereas normally with clever devices such as these there is a clear moment in which a switch is flicked ON or OFF (a revelation occurs, a trapdoor is released, etc), with By the time it gets dark we experience a suspended state of not knowing. About half of the way in, I felt myself loosing my footing, and from there on, captured by the film's relatively slow pace, I pleasantly continued to free-fall.
Super inspiring as a model for a magic show/theatre show. Are the actions and text on stage relating to the present moment, or a previous one? Is it a simulation of real magic, or a display of real magic?
This film teaches us to float without having to decide.

I adore the lampooning that magic gets here, in the animated series Big Mouth ep 1.

Boy in middle: ‘Do you mind? I’m doing a magic trick!’
 
Girl on left: ‘I love magic. It’s like juggling but it’s definitely more confrontational, that’s for sure.’
 
Girl on right: ‘Yeah it’s like one person playing cards at you.’

It highlights what should always be obvious: that performance can be seen a veiled aggression, a means of selfishly asserting oneself, commanding the attention in the room.
Next time I hear or read about 'commanding your audience' I'll think of this lovely send-up.
Magicians be warned: know your place.

How great to find Liberty Larsen.
On Penn & Teller's latest TV show 'Fool Us', in which an array of magicians perform each week (under the pretence of fooling the Vegas duo), I was delighted to come across Liberty Larsen. Her style is clearly after my own heart, as she sets up to undermine the act itself, and call attention slyly to its own machinations, whilst keeping the illusion intact.

"I really don’t like lying to people… It’s a real problem, it interferes with this job.
As a magician, if you’re performing as yourself, and not as a character, as soon as you open your mouth it’s sort of inevitable, you’re just going to start lying, and I have really terrible magician’s guilt…"

Thus begins Liberty's act, and how perfectly the text calls attention to itself, to its own unfolding. The 1st line is already a lie, as well as an admission of lying, and its negation, all at once; and so we listen, teetering, veering, careening in and out truth and falsehood, reality and fiction.
Then, turning to the show's host, Alyson Hannigan:

"So, when I sit here with you, on a very primal level, every cell in my body does not want to lie to you. So I’m not going to. So there... [pause] Alison I brought a time machine with me to the theatre tonight…"

Penn's laugh can be heard loud and clear, as the tension built up from the premise somersaults and makes a big splat on the floor of the theatre. The rest of the act bathes in the glory of this initial framing, and moves a little away from it. But the opening text is fantastic, and reminds me of the elusive rabbit I'm chasing in pursuing magic and theatre in the 1st place.

Watching the enigmatic film Last Year in Marienbad, about half of the way through it dawns on me that the subject matter - the 'drama' - is not central: yes, there is a love triangle of sorts, and yes it is kind of about a man pursuing a woman, in an oddly clinical beaux monde setting.
But the human drama is here something of a red herring, What is really at stake, and what the film director (Resnais) and screenwriter (Robbe-Grillet) pursued quite adamantly, is a kind of dazzling and atonal formal study in rhythm: rhythms of speech, incantatory repetitions, monotonous speech, as well as temporal and spatial disorientation.
In other words, we think we're watching a love story, but really this is video art: it is a black and white moving painting set to recited poetry, a hallucination of slow camera shots, repetitious images, a monotonous voice that insists on remembering, and another that insists on forgetting (if there is a subject, really, I would say this is a film about our watching of the film).

All of which leads me to reflect on how much I love this strategy: offering spectators a work that is seemingly one thing, though it is in fact very much another. A kind of misdirection in itself, practised so well by some of my favourite writers (Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy and Italo Calvino's books spring to mind). It is a device to captivate readers and spectators: the familiarity lures people in, and once inside, well, why not try something else? With Resnais' film, we might pay a visit for the plot, but once we get there we are shown slow hallucinatory takes of staircases and people standing immobile (9 minutes into the movie, and still no human being speaking).

There is so much potential in this strategy for magic and magic shows. Because magic is attractive and familiar, what better way of luring audiences with this red herring, and then turning towards stranger things? I promised a card trick... however, here's an experiment in rhythmic speech and deconstructed narrative, ha!
Unlike Resnais's film, however, I wonder if magic is more constrained by the promise inherent in the genre (the final surprise or revelation, the entertaining climax): no matter how much you stray from the magic trick, I wonder if as a magician you still have to end on that familiar, slightly toe-curling, but-oh-so-reassuring final note: "Ta-da...!"


Trailer for Last Year in Marienbad

In talking about magic in the work of David Lynch, I am not referring to a special ethereal quality, but simply the abundance of what are effectively conjuring performances, re-imagined in the context of the world of Twin Peaks.
In series 3, Cooper makes his uncanny appearance levitating inside a glass box, in echoes of David Copperfield's 'Flying' levitation back in the 90's, during which the illusionist produced the same exact image, night after night on a live stage.

Returning to series 2, during the extended Black Lodge sequence of the last episode, Cooper's cup of coffee keeps changing consistency, from smoothly liquid, to thick and oozy, to block solid, again and again. Lynch is aptly tapping into conjuring - the uncanny transformations of matter - to power this universe in which time flows in all directions. The magic tricks pinpoint a fractured dream-like reality.

Other examples include, in episode 8 of series 3, the 'giant' walking on stage and gently levitating upwards, whilst an unnamed woman holds a ball of light.

One of my pet favourite moments, from the current series (3), is an exchange between drug dealers (here called man A and man B, as I don't know their names), in which a coin trick is used to establish a clear sense of hierarchy. Man A holds out a US quarter and tosses it into the air. As the coin is filmed spinning in mid-air, man B suddenly, and to his surprise, spits out a quarter from his own mouth, and holds it between his fingers. In a further circular twist, the original spinning coin then falls into the extended palm of man A: man B looks down at his hands to find that the coin he had spat out is no longer there.
Somewhat impossible to stage in 'real life', but beautifully capturing how magic can serve this eerie sense of reality not being what we think it is.

'Through the darkness of futures past
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds
Fire walk with me'
(end of episode 6, series 2)

As I continue to watch Twin Peaks, explicit references to magic crop up again and again.
One of the most startling scenes occurs when Donna pays a visit to an old woman, whose grandson is studying magic. The grandson, sitting in a large armchair wearing formal evening wear, looks remarkably like a young Lynch. He performs a somewhat impossible trick, making the cream-corn vanish from the plate into his hands. Shortly after, he intones the refrain that will continue through a few episodes: 'J'ai une âme solitaire' (I am a lonely soul).

What a delight to see magic appearing (or re-appearing) in director David Lynch's works. I am thinking in particular of Twin Peaks, where in Series 1 we see Dr. Jacoby perform a fairly impressive trick with golf balls, to a very unimpressed Special Agent Cooper.

Here the magic underscores the character's quirky and rather bizarre personality. Magic as a kind of odd tick, a strange appendage or form of behaviour, never directly mentioned. Agent Cooper does not react in the slightest, nor does Dr. Jacoby take this indifference as a cue to stop his conjuring shenanigans: he just keeps the tricks going, as though it were the most natural accompaniment to their conversation.

From the same series is another moment in which magic has a far more tangible effect, enabling a passage from one world to another: in this case, the investigating 18year old Audrey is trying to con her way into working at the casino/brothel at the epicentre of the series. In her interview, her lies are found out, and when the casino manager threatens her with that sweat line 'Give me one good reason why I shouldn't air-mail your bottom back to civilisation...', Audrey thinks for a moment, then reaches for a cherry from a nearby cocktail, and performs the old trick of tying a not in the cherry stalk, all whilst holding it in her mouth. This time the trick succeeds, and the next line from the harsh interviewer is "Sign here... Welcome to One-Eyed Jack's".
The execution of a deliberate con is how the character cons her way into the job. Or else: when her lies are found out, she openly performs a remarkable deception, thereby insisting with trickery, as opposed to giving up and changing course of action. Fake it till' you make it, all the way.

‘Since the world is on a delusional course, we must adopt a delusional standpoint towards the world.’
Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil

I have just found my motto.
Henceforth I shall call myself not an 'illusionist', but a 'delusionist'.
I won't 'illude', I will 'delude'.
As in: "Ladies and Gentlement, for my next delusion...'

What does magic share in common with with the way cubs play-fight?
Quite a lot, as I was surprised to discover in reading philosopher Brian Massumi, in his essay on how animals actually show capacities for ‘thinking’ in action, for language, for sophisticated play: in other words, activities that we tend to reserve for ourselves, the special human beings that we are (not).
 
It turns out that cubs have particular ways of ‘exaggerating’ the gestures of fighting, and therefore signalling to the their siblings “Look, this is as if we were fighting”. They are constantly ‘telling’ each other that what they are doing isn’t real: it’s a kind of theatrical version of the real thing. This ‘telling’ happens precisely through the exaggerated mannerism, which is what tells the other “This is a game”.
To quote the philosopher:

‘The play statement “this is a game” is far from a simple act of designation. It is the staging of a paradox. A wolf cub who bites its litter mate in play “says”, in the manner in which it bites, “this is not a bite”.’ (p.4)
 
The “this is not a bite” is what turns it into play. The “this is not a bite” sweeps up both litter mates in an act of play. Finally, observe this striking passage that uses words like ‘misdirection’ and ‘flourish’, words straight from magic’s vocabulary:
 
‘The [play] gesture is performed with a mischievous air, with an impish exaggeration or misdirection, or on the more nuanced end of the spectrum, a flourish, or even a certain understated grace modestly calling attention to the spirit in which the gesture is proffered.’ p.9
 
What better ways of describing theatrical magic?
Of course audiences at a magic show in a theatre already know from the billing that what they are going to see is “not real”. The title already does the job. This is perhaps another reason why I deliberately titled my current show This is not a magic show: to consciously bring attention to the way titles ‘perform’ certain functions.
Apart from the titling, consider the magician's gestures themselves - the handling of the cards, which might be bombastic or more ‘nuanced’ as Massumi writes: it is the physicality that "tells" the spectator “look, this is playing, this is not the real thing”. And both parties are swept up in this act of play.
With the added paradox: that the thing ‘referred’ to in magic, the miracle or impossible feat, is by definition unreal, it will never manifest. Unlike the cub’s play fight, which refers to the 'real fight', with magicians and their audiences the ultimate ‘referent’ is nowhere to be found:  magic remains gloriously, mysteriously, and irresolvably, absent.
 
 
FYI: The book is What Animals Teach Us About Politics, by Brian Massumi.

During a foggy start to the new year, a saving grace has been the rather brilliant US television series Search Party. (Spoiler alert: ending revealed below)

























Set in the present day in Brooklyn, we find the central character, a woman in her 20s, who is shocked when she comes across a street poster of a missing person, someone she vaguely knew from school, and decides to investigate with the help of her hipster friends. All kinds of clues, possible conspiracies and even a cult are gradually uncovered; in a very dramatic ending, a second character is killed, but the missing person is found… until everyone involved realises that the missing person had, in fact, simply decided to take a hike and go off ‘social media’ for a while, not realising she had been declared missing at all. All the mysteries, conspiracies, the links intimated between characters and places (the big mind-map on the wall, different coloured threads connecting words and photos), were in fact fictitious, unwittingly ‘made up’ by the main character, in a thirst for adventure and a misguided sense of justice.
What is striking to me, with my magic hat on, is this brilliant sense of the ‘mystery’ dissolving: of complicated conspiracies and possible linkages vanishing into thin air. The central character believes to be digging deep, to be uncovering a strange network of events and people, a great puzzle forming in her mind, and therefore ours too. It is merely delusional. There is no mystery.

Search Party was a great Don Quixote for our times, except Quixote that is doomed to wake up from the dream she has been constructing, and realise that, because of her interpreting the world as ‘mysterious, a person has accidentally been killed. She saw a mystery, where there was in fact none.

I thought of writer Thomas Berhard’s quote (from Correction):
'We mustn’t let ourselves go so far as to suspect something remarkable, something mysterious, or significant, in everything and behind everything.'

 

In May 2016 I conducted an interview with a theatre magazine, but for various complicated reasons this was never released. So here it is in text format!

It mainly covers how 'This is not a magic show' draws on contemporary theatre and performance references (mentions of Spalding Gray, Forced Entertainment and Stewart Lee abound), and what it means to present magic in the context of theatre, intended both as a place and as an art form.
Enjoy
VG

I tend to dislike it when blogs just become occasions to shout about the places one's been, the 'amazing' things done there, etc. Blogs can be more than opportunities for self-aggrandizing and marketing.
Having said that: here I was at Tate Modern! Part of 'Tate Exchange', and curated by theatre director and artist Tim Etchells, I was part of a series of talks and presentations to inaugurate the new space, on level 5 of the Switch House.

Performing close-up magic in a crowded room is difficult at the best of times, those darned sight lines just won't work. Still, the main focus was on how to share some of the mechanics of magic, without really giving away 'the secret'. An idea that I take from the Alex Stone book, 'Fooling Houdini', is how magic is inherently insular, and, in an attempt to preserve secrets, remains very closed off to other developments in the arts and other disciplines. Despite many improvements, I would say that magicians on the whole remain anchored to modes of thinking, speaking, behaving and performing that seem somewhat at odds with 20th and 21st century developments in theatre arts.

So the event at Tate was for me an opportunity to try to talk about sleight of hand, to introduce "The Expert at the Card Table' (a sort of founding text for card magic, printed 1902), to discuss how magicians took the naturalness and 'invisibility' of gambling sleights, giving rise to close-up and sleight of hand magic.
I'm not sure much of it will 'stick', but I think, or hope, that understanding something about the real work behind magic can improve things: improve the dialogue between magic and other art forms, improve the status of magic, improve relations between audiences and magicians.
Explanations of magic's inner workings needn't be demonised or seen as a NO-GO area. I am wondering if there are sensitive, responsible, and caring ways to open up magic's mechanics to a non-magician crowd. Instead of constantly assuming this 'us-them' border, as though magicians and non-magicians were two different species, the former might learn something by sharing their knowledge. After all, performing is a lot about empathy, and putting oneself in the place of others...
VG

It's been a year since I've started working on a 'cover version' of René Lavand's No se puede hacer mas lento. You can see the earlier post about this here, for a bit of background.
This is a fairly short piece (6mins performed continuously), executed with one hand only, and only 6 cards.
I won't exaggerate: I practice this every day. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes only 10mins, but everyday there is a moment in which I zoom into this piece. It is very much like sitting at a piano to practice a single piece of music each day... the piece changing through the months, the years.
And yet I have not performed it for anyone, except late at night for a bunch of friends, when some dutch courage helped me to perform what is still not 'tight'.
There is something about this year dedicated to learning Lavand's piece that strikes me as both absurd and brilliant. I read the other day about an actor who spent 7 years practicing Hamlet for a particular director, who then died before the piece was ever staged. I don't intend to spend 7 years only 'rehearsing', but I have to say that sometimes that solitary rehearsal is kind of great, regardless of whether the piece will ever 'become public': it is just me, the cards, the movements. There is the pleasure of getting it right, of improvements, but also small surprises, the tiniest of details suddenly acquiring massive significance.
Part of the reason I have yet to present it to an audience, though, is that the piece still lacks any kind of narrative or conceptual frame. I've tried several versions - types of 'patter' let's say - and so far none seem to stick. I think that I am still a bit too haunted by the original, Lavand's version, and I don't quite know how to move away from that, if, indeed, that is what I need or want to do.
In the meantime, everyday I sit at a table and watch a little show performed with one hand and 6 cards. Is it senseless to spend so much time on a performance work that might never be shown?
VG

Wearing my other hat - my "real self" - I have written and published an account of learning sleight of hand magic. It's in the academic journal Dance, Theatre & Performance Training, though my article is not strictly academic in style or tone. In fact rather personal and biographical in tone, which is odd for me.

It can (sneakily) be found here (yes, don't tell anyone).

Enjoy! VG

A rare but delicious treat is coming across references to magic, especially in comedy. This short act by US comedian Pete Holmes makes some fine points about magic and magicians. Such as: 'Magic is the only form of entertainment where 90% of the crowd is trying to ruin it for themselves... Go to a magic show, just a sea of close-minded threatened dudes, going like: "No, no way, that ain't possible, MIRROR!"'

Penn & Teller's latest. Notice the sublime way in which the 'exposure' of the trick works for it, not against it. I can't even tell if the moment the secret string is cut is, in fact, just another visual gag and moment of magic.

Somewhat sceptically at first, then with increasing zeal and admiration, I am reading Alex Stone's Fooling Houdini (2012), an account of an apprenticeship in magic. What I am drawn to above all are the productive criticisms that Stone levels at the magic scene, criticisms that I find fitting, given how the art form, whilst thriving in some respects, remains stagnant: in its inability to develop new audiences (outside of magicians), or to move outside of the confines of cheap entertainment, and to generally have a good self-reflexive look at itself.

Stone puts the problem down to the assumed, and never questioned, need for secrecy:
‘Many professional have trade secrets, but in most, secrecy is not the defining characteristic of that profession. Few crafts so fiercely demarcate the line between artist and the audience as magic does.’ (p.136) Whereas musicians, writers or film makers might share the secrets of their profession with their audiences, magicians don’t, or feel they cannot: ‘Magic stands alone in demanding blanket ignorance from its audience.’ (p.136)
Whilst this might make magic special, at its worst the world of magic is slow moving, retrograde, conservative and even Masonic (I was surprised to read that many magic presidents of US societies are bona fide Masons).
In the book Stone makes some great points about how exposure (of tricks and their methods) might actually enable progress to be made, and how audiences also tend to quickly forget working methods, so strong is the illusion when seen afresh. But many magicians prefer to play the conservative card, and are vehemently anti-exposure. As Stone correctly diagnoses, this stance is very problematic:
‘The main problem with the antiexposure stance is that it sells magic short. It portrays magic as a stagnant enterprise with a handful of secrets that might easily be exhausted… It infantilizes the spectator by implying that they can’t be trusted not to step on their own fun, arrogating to the performer the power to decide what’s in an audience’s best interest.’ (150-151)
 
Stone’s book, particularly Chapter 6, has reminded me of how much it’s easy to get drawn into a small world of ‘sleights’ for aficionados only, pursuits that, whilst admirable, leave out the audience. Meaning, that many magicians aren't so aware of how magic is a form of theatre and performance. The 'trick' is vital, but only a partial component.
Perhaps the insistence in guarding secrets prevents magic from flourishing as an art form. Penn & Teller, once again, are a great example of how to innovate magic, precisely by playing with secrecy and revelation. No wonder magicians came out against them at the start of their career: they dared to embrace magic as a form of theatre, and to revitalise it.

To be continued...

Enjoy Alex Stone's book!
 
 

My better half/pseudonym/"real self" has only gone and published a book with Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. And it’s out now...
The current hardback price is not low, in fact it is rather high (the cheapest place to get it, at £45, is here). This is because it is is aimed at University Libraries, so do get ordering if you're that way positioned. Hopefully a paperback edition will come out in the future, so the rest of us can have a read.
Thanks
VG

A reviewer who clearly enjoyed the show in Cambridge last Sat (Cambridge Junction, Sat 14th May 2016, 7pm & 8.30pm).
Not the easiest show, with a bit of friendly heckling ('what's under the table?!!!'), quite a few kids making a concert of sweet wrappers or giggling in the quiet moments, and most strangely a small hen do sitting in the back row...
Yet this reviewer made my day. From Cambridge News:

Jude Clarke enjoys an evening of deconstructed magic with Vincent Gambini

"This is not a magic show," proclaim the publicity materials for Vincent Gambini's performance. But, like much of what was to follow in the Saturday evening performance in J3 at The Junction, that was slightly misleading.
Vincent is, in fact, a skilled and mind-bogglingly nimble-fingered magician, with a stock in trade of just the kind of tricks that you would expect from, well, a magician. Coins miraculously appear, then duplicate, from nothing in his hands. Seemingly 'normal' packs of cards take on curious features (at one point turning blank almost before our eyes) and formations in a manner that, being so close to the action, is that much more astonishing than when watching these types of tricks on a TV show or in a larger theatre.

























But what makes this show special isn't really the magic itself, it's the way it is presented. Deconstructing the drama and performance of 'magic', Vincent's low-key, wry and witty delivery uses other tricks too. The show starts, for example, with Vincent sitting quietly at a table, narrating the preamble to the start of his show, as if he is an observer rather than the performer himself, recounting his pre-show warm-up routine, showing himself making last minute tweaks to his opening words etc, in an arresting monologue that begins to subvert the usual, perhaps stale, performer/audience dynamic of this kind of show.

Later, he shares with us his quest for a more original opening magic trick (the Junction's director having, we're told, emailed him to ask him to start with something a bit more interesting than his usual, rather dull, card trick), taking in a hilarious series of phone calls to the Magic Circle helpline, seemingly manned by high profile magicians like Derren Brown and David Blaine, dutifully doing their shifts and offering the struggling performer tips and suggestions for new tricks to dazzle us with.

There's a quite brilliant sequence where Vincent first reads out the stream-of-consciousness reaction of one observer to one of his tricks, before reading it out again while simultaneously performing said trick. It's hard to explain quite why or how (much like the magic itself), but this method of presenting his undeniably skilled magic is gripping, hilarious and really fascinating.

Not a magic show, then? Don't be fooled by the disingenuous title. Vincent Gambini is every bit the magician, if you like your performances smart, clever, witty and thought-provoking.'



Read more: http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Vincent-Gambini-Cambridge-Junction-Review/story-29277898-detail/story.html#ixzz48oRjyDvf

I’ve been thinking of late about the differences between performance art and magic.

Broadly speaking, performance art is about real actions, real bodies and real time, whereas magic trades in the pure fakery of theatre, spectacle and illusion. In performance art, the person well and truly endures pain and discomfort, whereas magicians only simulate, for effect.
But of course this distinction is too black and white, and unfair: performance art might be about doing things ‘for effect’ (no differently from waving jazz-hands), and vice versa magicians have famously died or injured themselves during their illusions, thereby giving the lie to the supposed fakery of their acts.
What is always ignored or suppressed, by magicians and audiences alike, is the material reality of the magic act, what I think of as the labour of illusion: the hands and the countless years of training (for instance in sleight of hand card magic), or the disciplined body, with its wounds and scars.

Perhaps a distinction between performance art and magic can be made around the visibility and propriety of the wound: in the former it tends to be exposed, in the latter it is largely hidden. For instance, in performance artist Chris Burden’s 1971 Shoot, his assistant stood at a distance and shot the artist in the arm, inaugurating performance art as a wound-making activity.












Conversely, one night in 1918, vaudeville magician Chung Ling Soo (real name Bill Robinson) performed a version of his famous Bullet Catch, in which an assistant stood at a distance and fired directly at the illusionist: on this occasion the gun literally misfired, and instead of ‘catching’ the bullet in his hand, Chung Ling Soo was shot in the chest. He collapsed to the ground and for the first time ever broke his Chinese stage character, announcing in plain English: ‘Something’s happened. Lower the curtain’. He died the following morning.
Which of these versions of the shoot is more ‘real’?