MAGIE NOUVELLE - Circostrada Network

dossier
NEW MAGIC
THE EMERGENCE
OF A CONTEMPORARY ART
Over the past eight years, the field of magic has had
enough of rabbits and virtuosic sleight-of-hand
tricks. It has been affirming itself as an independent
artistic movement aiming to get back in touch
with the feeling of magic.
While we often may remember magic as mere entertainment,
the discipline also contains several
other elements. It is often used in ritual, traditional,
religious and medical domains and it deals with the
great human fantasies (flying, resurrections, mindreading,
etc.). It is essential to reinvest this creative
potential with issues that, although they are contemporary,
have been neglected for many years.
Determining the grammatical structure of this language,
studying the real in all of its forms in order
to take hold of it, making use of old techniques
along with new technologies: the idea is to always
be giving new life to the creative act, using magic as
means of endlessly transforming the world. Balls
flying over the heads of the audience, shadows that
take on a life of their own, a floating cloud beneath
a glass bell...
Through its ability to divert the real within the real
– by making the imaginary tangible, by giving life to
the invisible, by playing with our perception – the
language of magic is as diverse as the artists who
put it to use.
Just as the initiators of this movement are compiling
the “For a new magic” manifesto, Stradda is
transmitting the tools necessary to appreciate this
artistic movement, which allows for all new fields
of possibilities.
★ DOSSIER COORDINATED BY JULIE BORDENAVE.
contents
Five thousand years of enchantment p. 2
“An ability to infinitely transform the world” p. 5
Training. The transmission of a language p. 6
“All of our research can be helpful to art” p. 7
The heralds of the magic revival p. 10
Thierry Collet. The primitive concern p. 11
Kurt Demey. The mentalist city p. 11
Cie 14:20. The spectacular
at the service ofsensations p. 13
Olivier Poujol. Answering history with magic p. 13
The great illusion p. 14
An active principle p. 15
Distribution. From Rouen to Rome,
enthusiasm is on the rise p. 16
Who’s who in new magic p. 17
New magic videos can be found
on the website www.stradda.fr
Five thousand
A few historical landmarks to understand the
★ The term magic is the result of an initial
ambiguity: for your average person the word has
a symbolic connotation to charms, spells and
the sublime. The term magic appeared in 1535,
formed out of the Greek mageia, the Latin magia
and implicitly related to magi, a caste of Persian
priests who were worshipers of Zoroaster. A cluster
of magical practices then became generally
noticeable. The Inquisition would associate magic
with witchcraft, closing it up within a defamatory
model that would remain until the disappearance
of religious tribunals in sixteenth century France,
and in 1831 in Spain. The terms of conjuring
and illusionism appeared conjointly at the end
dossier from stradda #16 / page 2