About the project
Creative Time is pleased to present a blend of performance art and magic as part of Performa09. In Honor Among Thieves (Chapter 1: The Tower and the Star), Los Angeles–based artist Glenn Kaino will collaborate with renowned magician Ryan Majestic in a stage show that is part performance art and part magic. The show will challenge basic perceptions of reality, calling into question the relationship between a performer and his audience, and reality and illusion.The Tower is the sixteenth Major Arcana card in the traditional Tarot deck and often represents situations of monumental ruin, catastrophe, and epic change. The Star, the seventeenth Major Arcana, represents tranquility or hope. Kaino and Majestic use these metaphors as departure points for a spectacular magic performance. The show will begin by evoking the experience of wonder at first seeing a magic trick performed. Then, slowly, through the performance art technique of repetition, the audience will become a part of the magician’s process of rehearsal and refinement, witnessing how the magician engages audience members in different ways. Before the audience, the trick moves from one of illusion to one of technique. Magicians, much like artists, make changes to one’s basic understanding of reality. Honor Among Thieves is an attempt, says Kaino, “to learn to believe and not believe at the same time.” It is the first of many ongoing experiments with art and magic that the artist will make as an interrogation of the social contract and a restructuring of systems of validation and meaning.
Performances take place at 7PM and 9PM on Monday, November 9 at the historic Slipper Room, 167 Orchard Street, New York, NY, 10002.
Tickets are $10 and may be purchased online at creativetime.org/kainotickets.
