Los Angeles artist Glenn Kaino’s Honor Among Thieves was a performance featuring magician Ryan Majestic for Performa 09. The show challenged basic perceptions of reality, calling into question the relationship between a performer and his audience, and reality and illusion.
Majestic began by evoking wonder in the audience, as they initially witnessed a magic trick performed. Then, slowly, through the performance art technique of repetition, the audience became a part of the magician’s process of rehearsal and refinement—Majestic performed the same mentalist trick with every audience member, gifting each of them a deck of cards before the piece “reset” with the next audience member. Such repetition provided audience members the rare opportunity to gain a nuanced understanding of both the magic act and the performance.
Photograph by Meghan McInnis
Glenn Kaino and Ryan Majestic
Honor Among Thieves (Chapter 1: The Tower and the Star)
Manhattan
2009
