If you thought magic only existed in Narnia or at Hogwarts, think again.
On Thursday, Feb. 23, Portland State professors Sue Taylor and Rita Alves will present their latest work as part of the 100th Annual College Art Association Conference session titled “Magic and Media” in Los Angeles.
If you thought magic only existed in Narnia or at Hogwarts, think again.
On Thursday, Feb. 23, Portland State professors Sue Taylor and Rita Alves will present their latest work as part of the 100th Annual College Art Association Conference session titled “Magic and Media” in Los Angeles.
Taylor will preview her paper, “The Masked Magician: Enacting Archaic Desires,” and Alves will follow with hers, “The Freak Show & Transformation in Michael Jackson’s Life and Work.”
Their presentations will investigate and explain the relationship between media and magic in the age of new-media culture and delve deeper into the transformation and evolution of media arts. Both women shared their papers at a conference preview in Portland Jan. 20th.
In exclusive interviews with the Vanguard, Taylor and Alves discussed their spellbinding subjects.
Vanguard: How long have you been working at PSU?
Sue Taylor: Since 1997.
Rita Alves: I’m a new studio art faculty member at PSU. This past fall was the first term I taught here.
VG: What do you like most about your job?
ST: The students! With few exceptions, they are hard-working, receptive and eager to engage with ideas. At PSU, students often have to make enormous sacrifices for their education. Seeing them succeed at their work makes every challenge worthwhile.
RA: I love being able to share my knowledge and interests with enthusiastic students.
VG: Why did you decide to get involved with the magic and media conference? How has the public responded to it?
ST: My ideas about the psychic valence of the magic routine came first when I caught Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed on TV, and then I discovered that there would be a session at our annual college art association conference devoted to magic and the media. It seemed the perfect venue for me to test my hypotheses. As for the second part, I can’t answer yet!
RA: “Magic and Media” is one of many sessions at a national art conference which is held annually by the College Art Association. The first CAA conference I attended was two years ago in Chicago. A classmate of mine in graduate school was interning for the organization, and she invited me to work with her at the registration boothat the conference as a way to cut down on the cost of travel. The following year, I worked for the organization again so I could attend the conference, but this will be the first time I present there. I was interested in the “Magic and Media” session because the theme seemed to fit best with the idea I had for the presentation.
VG: What are your respective papers primarily about?
ST: My paper is a psychoanalytic investigation of some of the patterns long established in the magic act: the sawing illusion, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, making a woman disappear, escape routines…They can all be interpreted as symbolically working through interesting problems of attachment and autonomy that occur in normal psychic development. I think audiences may register this unconsciously and experience a certain gratification in identifying with the magician as he performs his feats.–
RA: In “The Freak Show and Transformation in Michael Jackson’s Life and Work,” I claim that Michael Jackson is a performance artist in the visual art sense. If his physical transformation, publicity hoaxes and music videos are viewed together, his work has much in common with contemporary performance artists in the visual arts, including the French artist Orlan, who also uses body modification through surgery as part of her practice.
VG: What are you trying to communicate with your work, in particular, the above?
ST: I hope to show how cultural expression is rich with interpretive possibilities, how even the most familiar and seemingly straightforward images, artworks or performances function as sign systems that convey much more than an overt message, or, in the case of the masked magician, the thrill of an impossible spectacle.
RA: I have been interested in both Michael Jackson and freak shows for quite a while, primarily, I think, because I feel that freak-ery and spectacle are concepts which pervade our current media-saturated culture. I’m not sure that I am trying to “get this across” so much as I’m trying to sort it out in my own head. The writing process helps to sort out ideas, and this presentation is a residue of that process. It’s more like writing and presenting is a method of feeding a dialogue with other people through which ideas emerge. For me, it’s not as simple as getting an idea across.
VG: What is your process like?
ST: Art history has its various theories and methodologies. My own research is steeped in feminist and psychoanalytic approaches. These can be applied in the interpretation of all kinds of images, from paintings and sculptures in museums, to movies and all manner of pop-cultural phenomena. Typically, I’ll start my inquiry where I notice something peculiar that I can’t immediately explain and that’s usually just taken for granted. In this case for instance, I wondered, “Why are all magicians men?”
RA: Chaotic! I’ve always been told to write a clear outline to structure an academic paper, but I just can’t do it that way. I free write, read, free write, read more, do other things, and when ideas come I have to write them down. Things make sense to me in a non-linear way. I am primarily an artist, not a writer, so I approach writing as a creative process, even when it is academic writing.
VG: The conference session says that it will “investigate the relationship between magic and media in the age of new-media culture.” What do you think that relationship is?
ST: One could say that, fundamentally, both involve illusion. As I looked into the history of magic, I found it remarkable that magic is also entwined with the early history of cinema. As I point out in my paper, the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, famous for A Trip to the Moon (1902), was a stage magician before he became a director. In addition, we can approach both magic and the media using Freud’s Oneiric model; that is, they both organize and express unconscious materials in the way that a dream works.
RA: Have you ever accidentally erased an entire paper you typed on a computer? A hand-written paper doesn’t just disappear into thin air like that. Digital media is bizarre and ethereal. People can communicate across the globe instantly without leaving their seats. This is something magicians in Houdini’s era never could have dreamed of. The connection between magic and media seems pretty apparent to me.
