I love seeing magic tricks in film – the way magic can ‘be’ something a bit different, depending on the context of the story, thematics, aesthetics etc. Thien An Pham’s Inside the yellow cocoon shell (2023) is among other things a film about the invisible and the unseen. Early on there is a striking scene in which the protagonist is standing in a city street in Saigon, paying for Bánh mì sandwiches and speaking on his phone. He casually advances slowly towards the static camera, until his red t-shirt fills the entire frame. He lowers himself to the ground for no apparent reason, disappear ..read more

  Last week I happened to hang out and work with some great magicians, and it got me thinking about a couple of things, based on conversations we had. But first: I realized, or rather I remembered, that I’m not a magician. Or rather, that my relationship to magic (in the sense of the magic 'scene') is, quite happily, that of outsider. There are, after all reasons, valid reasons why I left magic back in 2000. This was motivated at first by a desire to rethink what magic could be, and eventually I simply let go of magic and embraced performance art and contemporary theatre. The initial des ..read more

(Photo Credit: Maria Mochnacz / Press) Preface One thing is for sure: when it comes to performance, I’m drawn to a performer who questions, challenges, or simply struggles with performance itself. As though there’s something a bit off about performance and performing, and the performer is trying to work it out, to get out from under it, to hold it up to the light (in the way that PJ Harvey, pictured, seems to be gently questioning the portrait photograph). Performance is not a settled affair, this relation with the audience, this idea of watching, of being watched: entertainment, spectacle ..read more

There was something so uniquely disarming about the street magic act by Polish magician Diobo, who recently passed away. I remember asking myself: how is he managing to capture the crowd so effectively, here in the busy centre of London, despite seemingly not trying to capture a crowd at all? Why are 100 people stopping to watch a guy who appears not to want any attention (no entertainer smiles, no waving, no concerted applause, and barely any eye contact)? And how on earth did he make that white mouse disappear from between his cupped hands? I never met Diobo, and therefore I cannot pay tri ..read more

The only live performance I did over Zoom, in 2020, was at the very end, in December, as part of a larger event organised by the RoseHill, Brighton. You can watch a video below. I did notice a curious thing: performing from home does give you, as in sports' games, 'home advantage'. So here, despite not having performed in months, and finding Zoom less than ideal, I am using sleights and techniques that I likely wouldn't use at the start of a regular face-to-face performance. What I mean is that, by performing at home, I had much more control over the cards, the table surface, and of course t ..read more

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I recently had a short chat with theatre maker Tim Crouch, who was advocating the possibility of a magic performance that would fully reveal the mechanics behind it, giving up the mystique of virtuosity (which Crouch distrusts) in favour of an approach where spectators and magician are genuinely on the same page. Where is magic at, in the ongoing discussion around ‘revelation’? Are magicians forever bound to jealously guard their precious secrets, like deluded Gollums scuttling off behind a rock to play with the latest store-bought gimmick, or are there interesting, innovative and generous way ..read more

The kind of artworks (be they cinema, music, visual art, theatre/performance, comedy, magic, etc.) that I’m most drawn to are those that present not just ideas or 'content', but rather those that conduct a serious reflection on the medium itself: that is, art that questions art. I am drawn to the self-reflexive turn that allows audience and artists to engage with, and to question, the very encounter between audience and artist. At its best, this kind of ‘meta’ work can provide something like an epiphany, a surprising realignment of mind and reality, like pressing reset on how we think of art ..read more

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I'm grappling here with an old chestnut, please bare with me... I'm busy preparing a presentation for the Wellcome Collection in London. It's not going to be an 'expose' of how magic tricks work, but more a look at how magicians practice, what kind of things magicians spend their time doing, behind the scenes, etc. And it occurred to me that in fact 'explaining' how magic tricks work is close to impossible. Of course some broadly speaking 'mechanical' or technical aspect can be explained. Let's take for example a classic card trick, in which a spectator randomly selects a card and signs it: t ..read more