November 21st, 2018

In October of 2017 I went to the Shanghai International Magic Convention just to watch and discuss magic with other magicians. I saw so many great performances, there was the reknowned mentalist Banachek, the writer of the Psychological Subtleties book series and many others about mentalism. One illusion of his that really stood out was him wrapping his head with cloth tape and aluminium foil as the most certainly opaque blindfold imaginable. He a then had audience members bring out random objects from their pockets and he was able to very accurately describe them. He also did a terrifying russian roulette routine where he made a prediction before randomly giving spectators envelops, some with knives in them and some without. His correctly guessed beforhand who would have the blades and who wouldn't. Perhaps the most inexplicable act was from a Dutch performer called Niek Takens, who won the stage gala competition. His card productions were incredibly clean, his fingers were wide open and his sleeves rolled up. I actually don't have a clue how he did it. Another act that really caught my attention, partly because it was really clean, but also very unusual, was this Egyptian themed act from Italy. He openly produced these huge lamps and paper fans from his bare hands with no cover. There was also a surprisingly underwhelming floating piano performance where the secret what somewhat too obvious. The whole convention was full of creativity ad originality, I saw act involving magic with flowers, paper planes, dice, paint brushes and leaves. An extremely spectacular show was this act done in front of a translucent sheet onto which computer generated images were projected. This was intended to augment some sleight of hand dove magic tricks. I wasn't sure if it was meant to be magical or just visually extravagant.