First ever Uppsala Magic & Comedy or What I Did Last Weekend

Friday the 25th to Sunday the 27th was the dates for the first ever Uppsala Magic & Comedy festival, an opportunity for people to see some high class magic and comedy. There was also the opportunity to see the Swedish Championships in Magic so many magicians were at the festival for that reason as well.
The person that we have to thank for the festival and its success is Johan Ståhl who created and organised the festival. Of course also all the magicians and other artist at the festival helped making it a huge success. Finally the audience was important to make the festival the greatest magic & comedy festival in Scandinavia, all from the youngest children to senior citizens where there.
I was myself to some degree involved in organising the competitions so I didn't get to see all of them but I have been told that they where over all quite good. Unfortunately it was as always difficult for the people competing in the mentalism category although they had very good acts.

Johan Ståhl the person responsible for everything and probably the one who slept the least.

There were some acts for the very young. Zillah och Totte was a big success with the youngest children.

Tom Stone, one of the greatest magicians in Sweden and known among magicians all over the world, both performed and gave a lecture about how people are being fooled.

You could also learn magic either from Magnus Vihagen if you were a little bit younger or from Andreas Mattisson if you were more interested in manipulation. It was also possible to buy magic tricks from the dealers, some who came from so far away as Denmark.

From even further away than Denmark was one of the stars of the festival Inez from Spain. She had a very pleasing combination of comedy and great magical moments in her acts.

The two greatest international stars was without doubt David Williamson and Yu Ho Sin. They represent two completely different forms of magic. I learned that some thought that David Williamson was too pushy and harsh towards the spectators he brought on to the stage. I was on the other hand impressed by that in my opinion he never crossed the line even though he was pushing it. Yu Ho Sin on the other hand didn't need any spectators on stage. His act is pure magic and the manipulations that he is doing are not possible, that's how good he is.

The photos were taken by Theresa Kriegler and she will probably write something about the festival on the blog TrixxBox (in German)

If you want to read more about the festival right away it is possible to do that at Magi-arkivet (in Swedish) There you will also find the results from the competitions.

What I do for a living

Just so that no one forget it, what I do for a living is to lie an cheat. And people actually like it, at least that was the impression I got from the applauds for my show this last Saturday. I don't talk about my performances unless they are public and since I do mainly private parties, corporate events and university related gigs I don't say much about work here.

Since this was a public event I can tell you that this Saturday I was filling in for a fellow performer who got sick. Usually we do three days in a row when we perform at Magic Bar (Karlaplan 6). But now I only did one night and performed with Tom Stone who was one of the scheduled performers. Because you get to see at least two magicians when you visit Magic Bar Thursday-Saturday.

Great Magic

This blog is supposed to be about magic among other things. So I thought I might actually post something that has to do with magic. I know about a few very creative minds in magic. This video is from one of the greatest, Lubor Fiedler. And I mean that he is really worth watching.



If you don't understand exactly how these effects are done don't worry, most professional magicians don't have a clue.

First time Around the World

Last year I was the head organiser of the 15th European Skeptiks Congress in Stockholm and I thought that it was reward enough. It turned out that the city of Stockholm thought differently. The Stockholm Visitors Board was kind enough to invite me and other organisers of international conferences in Stockholm during the past year to a dinner at Millesgården.
We had a wonderful guided tour before the dinner and as a special treat I had a short performance before the dessert. I did a brand new effect that I have given the name ”Around the World”. Given a number of different cities in the world, some random shuffling and free choices the person involved in the effect ends up in Stockholm as is to be expected for an effect performed for the Stockholm Visitors Board.

Booking is open

Now it is actually possible to sign up for the trips to Prague. Four days in Prague, well perhaps more like three considering the travel from Sweden and back. But definitely three nights at a very suitable hotel for experiencing the magical and mysterious side of Prague.
We leave Sweden on Thursday and return back on Sunday with plenty of time for people that don't live close to an airport to get there and back. In Prague we will see all the historical sights: Charles bridge, the astronomical clock, and much, much more but unlike any ordinary tour we will also learn about the mysterious history of the city. Alchemists, astrologers, and the Golem are all part of the magical Prague (it is even in the tourist brochures). But we will see more, learn more, and experience more, that I can promise.

The special introduction price is 6589 SEK and that include the airfare, hotel, and all the meals except the dinner on Friday evening.

http://euroresor.se/det-magiska-prag/
http://euroresor.se/listtyp/ovriga-destinationer/

A kind of longer status update

I have been in Prague a couple of days (1 week), and it has been kind of hectic. So hectic that this is my first opportunity to write about it.
It was on Thursday that I flew in from Uppsala. (Yes, Uppsala has an airport it is called Arlanda.) Just after getting off the plane things began to feel strangely familiar. I was met at the airport by Ray Salman who is responsible for me spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. It has been a few years but Ray is a good friend from the old days in Prague and he has been in Uppsala performing with some other of my Czech friends and was a huge success at the Nordic Championships in Magic. We went to a restaurant and talked magic for four or five hours, a few other things as well, but since Ray was going to translate my lecture we talked quite a bit about that. And yes that is why I am spending a few more days in Prague than originally planned. Mostly I visited old friends but this way I got to work a bit as well.
I stayed the first night with Duo Absolon at their apartment witch included me spending a long time talking about magic again with Karel Ocelík. Fortunately I also got to sleep, and I slept very well.
Friday I moved to a hotel and saw nothing of Prague, I got a ride to the hotel and sat down in my room to write. I didn't bring any lecture notes from Sweden, partly because that would have been crazy when you may as well print them in Prague, and partly because I hadn't finished them. So I wrote like crazy looking at the watch. Ray had told me about a print shop at Karlovo náměstí and I looked on my watch on the way there, because either they would close at 17 and I would be without lecture notes or they close at 18 and everything would work out. On my way there I learned two things, that it is very easy to forget subway exits. It is no problem remembering where to enter the subway but to know exactly where you will get up is not easy when you are finding your way out. But I got out where I wanted at Karlovo náměstí and was met by a few drops of rain. And I also learned that if you want to write crime novels it is a good thing to be Swedish judging from the book advertisings in the metro. Unfortunately the print shop closed at 17, fortunately I met the person closing the shop, and she told me about a different place just around the corner. The second print shop managed my somewhat complicated order without a problem as I was waiting. Understandably I felt very lucky when I went back to the hotel in Kobilisy with all my material. And I managed it all on a 90 minutes ticket. Between the metro and my hotel I learned one more new thing buying something to eat, and that was that they have cancelled the 50Kc banknote.
Back at the hotel the evening continued with preparations for the lecture, I had no time for that before since I was writing like crazy. As can be understood I only slept a couple of hours before getting up in the morning.

I came to the venue of the lecture about 45 minutes before it was going to start and I found that people were waiting. I think the seminar went quite well and I finished in time for people to go to the Illusionists. (That's a big magic show that was in Prague on that day.) For some reason I thought that there would only be a performance at 15 so when I missed that one I went to Vyšehrad for my first excursion as a tourist. But after I found out that they had also an evening show I made sure to watch that one. This included getting hold of a ticket and I first tried a ticket office that apparently closed but on the way there I passed Staromětské náměstí and there I saw that one of my magic friends were doing a street performance. It ended up with me going to the O2 arena to buy the ticket there. It was worth the money since I got an inexpensive seat. It was not bad but it lacked the continuity that you get with a more limited cast. And since there were so many performers obviously some were better than others. One thing I liked a lot was that I ran into so many old friends, some that I had seen at the lecture and others that I hadn't seen there. If it wasn't for the fact that it was a magic show I wouldn't have recognised anyone at O2 now I met at least 10 people. But basically I was still working because I made a lot of notes from the show and tried to figure out what I thought worked and what was not so good.
All day Saturday I was carrying with me my umbrella but of course it wasn't raining. Sunday morning it still wasn't raining and I moved from one hotel to another hostel (at least more of a hostel than a hotel). Since it still wasn't raining I left the umbrella at the new place when I went to meet some friends that arrived in Prague the same day. One of my friends were going to give a lecture at the institute of organic chemistry and biochemistry the following day, When I was on my way to the metro there were a few drops of rain but I thought little of it. I still didn't think much of it as I left the metro at Dejvice but it kept raining and when I met my friends and we went to the Hrad in the rain, we also went back in the rain, met with the host of my friends and when went to the Hrad again in the rain, but this time with umbrellas. Went down to Malástrana and had some dinner at a nice vegan place. After we finished the dinner it was still raining and we saw Karlův most, went back to my friends hotel by subway and when I had to get back in the rain again.
Next morning it was not raining but my shoes were still wet, fortunately my room included a hair dryer so when I left that problem was taken care of. I was going to my friends lecture at two but before that I had time to show my other friend a little bit of Prague, we started at the castle once again. We took a different way down passing by the Swedish embassy and when we found our way to Muzeum alchymistů which was quite interesting. The tower named after the famous trickster Kelly was more interesting than the exhibition on the ground floor. We continued over Karlův most and saw the multimedia clockwork at Staroměstská radnice and a few more things before having to get back to Dejvice for the lecture. It was not that obvious to find the way to the institute although I had been there before. In the time I had been gone they put up new buildings along the way. But we got to the lecture in time, and we were not the only ones although the building was technically closed due to construction works.
After the lecture we had to find the restaurant we were going to have dinner in by ourselves since our host and one more Czech scientist would come later. This time it was a vegetarian restaurant and not unlike many such places they had advertisements for things the Czech skeptics might have a few things to say about. After our dinner the host had to go but the rest of us went to Palladium and a Starbucks so that some of us could get an Internet connection and do some work while the rest of us were social.
On Tuesday I went to my old work at the Ústavu fyzikální chemie Jaroslava Heyrovského AV ČR and I got there at a very good time, exactly at the time for lunch. Much looked the same but a few things had changed as well. But the people was as friendly as ever and I spent a few hours there distracting them from their work. One of my Czech friends was performing in a play that evening and kindly booked me a ticket, fortunately the theatre was quite close to another meeting I had that evening. Since I am an honorary member of the Motorlet magic club I wanted to try to see them. On my way to Motorlet I first found theatre Gong and got my ticket. For once I had to practice my Czech quite a lot. Almost no one in Motorlet speaks English, a few speaks German and one of the professional magicians actually know how to say ”hello” and ”thank you” in Swedish. The theatre was of course in Czech as well and since it was a comedy there were a lot of things I didn't get but it was fun all the same.
For my last day in Prague I decided to do some shopping. I was meeting some old friends in the evening but before that I looked for books and DVDs in Czech, I found some short texts, with explanation of grammar, vocabulary and with the text on a CD. I also found some good movies some Czech and others with Czech dubbing. It was the first day it felt like I had some time off and could actually just go around and relax. Taking it easy before meeting my friends at a restaurant in the vicinity of Národní divadlo. It felt a bit strange walking back to my hostel in the evening knowing that I had to leave Prague the following day.
Ray picked me up close to Masarykovo nádraží and kindly drove me to the airport at 11.40 and after a delay (not usual for a SAS flight) at 14.20 I took of from Prague heading back to Uppsala.

Something to read

This will be an exercise in Swedish if there is anyone who follow this blog and doesn't know the language already. The Uppsala Student Union's newspaper have an article about me in the next issue but one can read it online from today.

Can magic be art?

I have read a few things about the art of magic, far less about the art of mentalism. What people say about this art is not always flattering. Some say that magicians are the ones that talk about art while dancers or painters do art. Others have said that magic is what people with no talent do if they want to stand on stage.
Unfortunately I have to agree.
I think one of the problems with magic is that we as magicians and mentalists spend a lot of time thinking about what the audience never perceive. We are thinking less on what we want to communicate to the audience. Magic is very different from singing, acting and painting, but art is not different from art. Art has to communicate something.
But there are other kinds of entertainment than art forms like music, acting, or dancing. People can be entertained by a juggler or acrobat, and those kind of acts can contain drama; drama in the form of a performer struggling to succeed. Those are acts that display skill and entertain in that way, they can also contain art but they don't have to.
I think that a lot of magic fall into the trap of being a display of skill and not art. There are very skilled performers that can display this skill so that the audience is left with no other explanation than that it was done by magic. But there are also a lot of performers who will perform tricks that the audience will not be able to explain, though they will know that it is not magic. I believe that these “tricks” are mostly performed as a display of skill and even some of the “magic” is a display of skill rather than art.
So what defines a great artist? I don't have the answer but I believe that at least one part of the answer is that a great artist do art because there is something that has to be said. A great artist do not do art to be seen. There is nothing wrong in itself in wanting to be seen and be on stage, but that will not produce art and definitely not great art.
If your motivation is to be seen, magic might be one of the better options. To become an acrobat or juggler requires a lot of practice if you want to be tolerable, while magic only requires a lot of practice in case you want to be really good. Magic is in its nature a secret art, while everyone can see how juggler does what he does, and if he is successful or not, people are not able to judge magic as easily.
So I have to give the critics right in that magic is perfect for people who have no talent but want to be on stage. To be a good juggler, singer or actor you have either to practice more and/or be better at communicating your emotions to an audience. As a magician you can much easier fake skill, that is after all what it is all about.
But is it true that magicians talk about art rather than do art? I think this is true as well. The ability to brake the laws of nature is from a dramatic perspective immensely strong, it will produce a feeling of astonishment more than any other art form is capable of. But why? I don't think many magicians are trying to say something about the world or try to open up their hart to the audience. This is what art is about, to communicate something. I think that we need to communicate something more than the moment of astonishment if we want magic to be an art.
Many magicians feel that what we do deserves to be an art, but very few seem to think about what they want to say. We want people to experience the moment of astonishment and resign to the obvious fact that magic is an art just because we magicians believe this moment to be something inherently beautiful.
So we talk about how what we do is an art, and we talk among ourselves about how we create this moment of astonishment. Because we want to create astonishment we often talk about the things that the audience will never see, that which we use to create this feeling of wonder. We choreograph movements in detail to create an illusion but spend little time trying to create an emotion. We create scripts that will hide manipulation but not always convey a massage.
It does not have to be this way but the fact is that although magic is an easy way to get on stage it is a very hard way to create art. A singer will have to practice a lot to be good but will have little problem to create art.
So what they say about magic is probably true, it is true because magic is easy if you want to get on stage, and magic is very hard if you want to create art.

A truth with modification

I don't do children parties, that is supposed to be a fact, but since there are few things that are certain in life it happens once in a while that I do.
I found that the nice people in Harbo that asked me to come and do a show put up some photos on their blog so I have no hesitation to share some of the photos with my readers.



The truth is that I really like children but they can be a tough crowd to please so I usually stay with what I know best, mentalism for an adult audience.




But of course if anyone really wants a show for children that is also enjoyable for adults they can always get in touch with me.

Helping out

I have been away, I have been in Prague. And I choose to be emotional for a moment, I love that city. I feel very much alive among all the history and culture. My Czech still needs a lot of work but it is getting better. Perhaps I should start to look for a well paying job in Prague because that is probably one of the few ways that I could be motivated to get a proper job.

While I was in Prague I met some old friends and some new friends as well. Some of my magical friends are going to do a show in a theater in Prague and we discussed a few ideas about different effects. It will be interesting to see what they will do in the end.

Now I am back in Sweden. I have spent today helping a friend with shooting a tv-pilot with the working title "mentalisten" (the mentalist). I did most of my work in the background. Though it was not all carrying bags, I did do some consulting and had a hand in one very good effect. Unfortunately I am not able to go into details but I am sure no one who watches the show will be able to figure it out, the camera crew were not able to figure it out and they were all magicians.

I actually did more magic today than I have done in a very long time because we had people around us all the time. I even performed on the train back to Uppsala. This day was a good day.

FISM world championship of magic

I have been absent for quite some time but resent events are making it impossible not to write this entry.
Although a majority of the people in the world don't know and probably don't care the FISM world championship of magic is now finished and the results are interesting. Three years ago the competitions were held in Stockholm and this time it was Beijing. (The championships are held every third year.)
Here are the results:

Comedy Magic
- 1st place … not awarded
- 2nd place … Brynolf & Ljung - Sweden
- 3rd place … Cheff Magic - Denmark

Mentalism
- 1st place … not awarded
- 2nd place … tie - Nicolai Friedrich - Germany - and Rob & Emiel - Netherlands
- 3rd place … Tony Montana - Argentina

Stage Illusions
- 1st place … Julius Franck - Germany
- 2nd place … Magic Sky Group - China
- 3rd place … not awarded

General Magic
- 1st place … Soma - Hungary
- 2nd place … Ma Yanyan - China
- 3rd place … Siebensinn - Austria

Manipulation
- 1st place … tie - Yo Kato - Japan - and Han Seol-Hui - Korea
- 2nd place … Sebastian Nicolas - Germany
- 3rd place … An Ha Lim - Korea

Invention:
- Jorge Luengo - Spain

Most Original Act:
- Charming Choi - Korea

Micro Magic
- 1st place … not awarded
- 2nd place … Vittorio Belloni - Italy
- 3rd place … tie Simon Coronel - Australia and Johan Stahl - Sweden

Cards
- 1st place … Shawn Farquhar - Canada
- 2nd place … Kristian Nivala - Finland
- 3rd place … Olmac - France

Parlour Magic
- 1st place … Marc Oberon - UK
- 2nd place … Charlie Caper - Sweden
- 3rd place … Latko - Argentina

Why is this so interesting? Well it is not because Shawn Farquhar went on to win the Gran Prix in the close-up category or that Soma won the Grand Prix for stage, though congratulations to them both.
Let us see how well the different national teams did:
(Giving 3 points for a gold, 2 for a silver, and 1 for a bronze)

1st place Germany with 7 points
2nd place Sweden with 5 points
4th place Korea and China with 4 points
8th place Hungary, Canada, Japan, and the UK with 3 points
12th place Netherlands, Argentina, Italy, and Finland with 2 points
16th place Denmark, Austria, Australia and France with 1 point

The invention category (Spain) and most original act (Korea) not counted

Congratulations to Brynolf & Ljung, Johan Ståhl, and Charlie Caper