Lavater - The Shadow of History

For one night only - 13th November 2009 - 7.30pm.

The noted physiognomist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) returns for one night only to reclaim his place at the centre of European culture, armed with magic lantern, silhouette apparatus and a curious tale of photographic experimentation in his Zürich cellar. Lavater was a contradictory figure of the late Enlightenment – a churchman who believed in magic – and his influential Essays on Physiognomy created a fashion for silhouette portraiture that outlasted his arcane, deterministic theories, and establish him as a significant prototype photographer. This presentation includes lantern slides, audience involvement and live photographic experiment.


Simon Warner is a photographer, artist filmmaker and researcher into the history of photography and visual media. With a NESTA Fellowship he has created a series of impersonations of European cultural figures: Goethe, Daguerre, Lavater and Herschel. His Lavater presentation was included in the Arts Council England touring exhibition Alchemy . Recent projects include Victorian photography residencies at the Brontë Parsonage and Florence Nightingale Museums, and silhouette drawing installations for The Last Tuesday Society and The House of Fairy Tales. Simon is currently artist in residence on the No.36 bus between Leeds and Ripon, courtesy of Harewood House, PSL [Project Space Leeds] and Transdev Harrogate & District.

Invocation

I’ve had a fascinating time indulging in a close reading of Invocation/New Invocation magazine the seminal publication for Bizarre Magick. The Invocation edited by Anthony Raven (Bob Lynn) ran for 16 issues from July 1974 to April 1978. Then as the New Invocation for 61 issues edited by Masklyn Ye Mage (Tony Andruzzi) from October 1979 to February 1991. After which Docc Hilford took the helm for a further 22 issues.

I’ve only been able to examine the Raven and Mage years as the HIlford issues are yet to be republished (apparently Deceptions Unlimited are working on an edition), but the issues I have looked at tell of a remarkable time in magic(k) performance. A real movement away from the entertainment magic of the day, giving some original thinking on all aspects of bizarre performance. The publication shows us the development of this thinking, from the bizarre to the goetic to the ‘sound gothic revival’.

Max Maven states in his forward to Volume 2 that ‘[here] you will find a wide range of material....Most of it is crap.’ I rejoice in this crapness as many of the effects represent a vibrant period of experimentation on subjects then untouched by magicians. Issue 61 serves as a footnote to all that hard work with its series of essays that represent a state of the art photograph of the genre.

Invocation and New Invocation represent a history of delightfully subversive magickal thought, but shouldn’t be seen in isolation. The reader must return to the pages of Magick or the various books published by the regular columnists. Bizarre magick is a complex and exciting phenomenon that ‘gave back to magicians their identity’ (Minch). Elements of the bizarre are still with us today, and just as popular.

Electronics for Magicians (review)

Electronics for Magicians by Jon Thompson

At The Amazing Meeting Seven this year there was a fascinating presentation by Steve Bauer who talked about winding up the estate of Jerry Andrus and in particular the incredible and eccentric inventions and gizmos found in the Andrus house, called the Castle of Chaos. I like to think Jon Thompson has a similar gaff, filled with electronic bits and bobs, and the air heavy with the smell of melting solder. That’s how an inventor’s place should be like.

Now I haven’t played with electronics for many years. In fact my soldering iron is gathering dust on the shelf and my bags of resistors, transistors and capacitors are lost in the Narnian depths at the back of a wardrobe somewhere. However, after reading Electronics for Magicians I’m going to dig all my old kit out.

This ebook is excellent for people new to electronics and people who know the pain that a burn from soldering iron can give. It provides perhaps the clearest introduction to the world of electronics I have read for a long time (So clear that I am considering buying a couple more copies and ‘censoring’ the magic out them and giving them to a couple of technical theatre students of mine.)

Components, circuits and the possibilities for magicians are explained in good depth and plenty of ideas are given as to how to use them in practice. A couple of projects are given, but as Chapter Seven suggests the key here is your creativity in using the electronics to your own ends. I’m certainly inspired to make, create and invent.

http://stores.lulu.com/booksbytomo

Recommended.

Leaving Las Vegas

I really enjoyed the Amazing Meeting 7 this weekend, and I didn’t need to go to Las Vegas for it. OK, so I would have gone to Vegas if I could, but the power of the interweb allowed me to watch it all online.

I was particularly fascinated by the panel discussion on Magic and Scepticism. A bit of a circular debate, but central to it was the problem of ethics in mental magic. More specifically do we need to tell the truth when we perform? Do we add disclaimers, and do we lie in our disclaimers? The Panel, unsurprisingly argued for the truth teller. Questioning the performances of Banachek and Derren Brown and hoping that everyone would come completely clean eventually. To paraphrase Penn “we do F***ing magic tricks”.

I’m still not sure as to where I stand in the debate. Ethics is something I wrestle with whenever I write or perform. But I appreciate that “lying” has a place in all performance work, but there are degrees to this and a scale as to what may or may not be acceptable. I’m certainly uncomfortable when spectators are drawn in beyond the level of seeing me as a trickster and we slip into the realm of the pseudo-psychic. Hasty re-writing and looking at my audience management is usually needed, but sometimes it’s purely because the spectator is in a position to want to believe.

Magicians do have an ethical responsibility, but we are also Magicians this often means juggling a complex performance persona.

Spiggie xxx

We lost Spiggie today.

Sleep well my little monster xxxx

Fortune Telling with Playing Cards

I found some wonderful fortune-telling cards today.

As far as I can tell it's a Nile 68x deck from the US Playing Card Co. c.1904, but distributed in this country by Foulsham & Co as The Gypsy Bijou Deck. BUT Foulsham & Co. also had a deck out in 1910 called the Gypsy Bijou with was very different having 36 illustrated cards. The art work on my deck box is the same, however the words "Made in the USA" appear on my box, whereas the 1910 box didn't have that printed on it. So did Foulsham briefly sell the Nile 68x as the Gypsy Bijou deck around 1904, before making their own deck in 1910? The Box I have looks a lot like the original Nile 68x box, but with a Foulsham label.

I'm not sure of their UK history, but I'm loving these cards.

monstrous media/spectral subjects

Hoping to get a good lot of writing done for monstrous media/spectral subjects conference in July.

Myself and Stuart Nolan are presenting a paper and performing around the subject of bizarre magic.

Stuart has started a thread at Magic Cafe, but it seems to have moved on to talk about gothic youth culture, rather than the gothic.
The Thread can be found here:
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=318667&forum=14&17

Believe it or not this was my first post on Magic Cafe!

As a fellow presenter and performer at the said conference, I though I’d chip into the thread. (And as my first post)

I think it's really important not to blur Gothic (youth?) Sub-culture with Gothic (literature based?) themes. Yes, you can argue for a cross-over, but the themes of excess /transgression/the sublime should be separated for the purposes of analysis.

The meta-language/meta-narrative dramaturgy of the bizarre performer is perhaps the most complex in magic, but it simultaneously and delightfully simple.

The construction of the performance text of the bizarre magician, in my mind has very little to do with the construction of the performance text of a band like the "Sisters of Mercy" (Who are the best and only true goth band ever )

But inevitably going back to Goth (youth?) culture and ‘embracing the butcher’; this died as soon it became commercial, in much the same way as punk. So-called Goth bands borrow more freely from a wider circle of themes derived, in the main, from commercial sources.

Yours being delightfully ambiguous and circling my arguments,

Nik