Magie Test interview

In January 2017, I was interviewed by Olivier Nicoleau from the Magie Test website; you can find the original French version HERE.
Here is the English translation:

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Hello Vincent! We know Vincent Hedan the magician, another Vincent Hedan the translator, and finally Vincent Hedan the creator — I am of course only talking about the magical part of your life. Although it is impossible to separate these three characters, which role suits you best? Can you tell us more about each of them?

Vincent Hedan: Hello Olivier. Although I prefer the moments when I am in front of an audience sharing a magical moment, the other two hats are also enjoyable.

Translation has allowed me to discover new ideas, to be inspired by other people’s work, and even to build personal connections with authors. Here is my favorite “phenomenon” when I translate: sometimes I begin translating an effect and my mind gets ahead of the original text, imagining what is going to happen or considering a method. Most of the time, the effect I imagine while “wandering” is different from the original, and so is the method, but it has inspired me and allowed me to imagine something personal.

Creating is also an exciting phase, in which I try to combine different elements gathered from films, books, or elsewhere, in order to obtain a new illusion. The hardest part is making as few compromises as possible. I do not always succeed, but I try to start from what the perfect version would be, and then obtain the closest possible version. Creating in this way increases my chances of producing something new and satisfying.

In a way, these three facets — performing, translating, and creating — are connected. Translation informs me, educates me, and inspires me. Creation stimulates me and pushes me to go further. Performance is the final outcome, even though details often need to be corrected afterwards, because not everything can be anticipated simply by imagining it.

I am very aware of how lucky I am: I can choose my projects and devote myself fully to them, always in a field I have been passionate about since I was seven years old.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Let’s stay with the creative side for a moment, if you don’t mind. For you, everything is a source of inspiration. Can you tell us a little about your interest in Asia, which certainly influenced Haiku, your first book test?

Vincent Hedan: I first became interested in Asia through cinema. I watched a lot of films, and I came across a few Japanese animated films — Princess Mononoke by Hayao Miyazaki, and Grave of the Fireflies by Isao Takahata. At the time, I thought Japanese cartoons were only meant for children. When I saw Grave of the Fireflies, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I remember spending a sleepless night afterwards. I told myself that there was no point in doing magic if we could not move an audience as deeply as that animated film had moved me. If that form of cinema had managed to overcome the “for children” prejudice in order to tell an interesting and moving story, then it had to be possible to do the same thing with magic.

Asian horror films — especially those of Hideo Nakata — also showed me a way of creating fear that was very different from American or European classics. Little by little, I think I was influenced by the style of these “different” films, and that is what I tried to convey in Haiku: a calm demonstration, with a poetic element, where the mentalist and the spectator are on equal footing, sharing a magical moment.

Of course, Asian cinema itself is not really responsible for this evolution. I simply exposed myself to a different culture, and that forced me to reconsider my position in many areas, whether in magic or in everyday life. The important thing was mainly to step outside my comfort zone and open myself up to something different.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Haiku, Babel, Pi: does the book test hold a special place for you in mentalism, or were these three creations simply the result of circumstances?

Vincent Hedan: In my case, these effects came more from circumstances and desires. The classic “book test” effect is somewhat absurd: if I were truly a mentalist, I could ask anyone to think of anything, without any support, and I would divine it. But that is impossible, so in certain cases mentalists use a book because of the method. The object is required by the method, but that should not prevent us from also justifying it in the presentation.

In Pi, for example, I wanted an impossible memory demonstration: I have the book with me because it is my training tool, and the spectator needs it in order to follow me. In Haiku, I wanted a poetic thought-reading effect: I show a small, interesting book and talk about a form of poetry that is little known to us. In Babel, I wanted an all-terrain book test, with a more informal and fun presentation: I use a joke as a psychological weapon to prevent the audience from questioning the presence of the book.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: For Babel, you had to write a real book with a story that, I imagine, holds together. For Pi, you had to create a system. During your lecture, we learn that you either created, or at least adapted, a memorized deck so that it would meet the requirements you had set for yourself. In the Poker de Joffe routine, you did all the calculations yourself. In fact, you are quite a hard worker; one gets the impression that nothing stops you. Is “impossible” not Vincent Hedan?

Vincent Hedan: Babel probably required the most work. First I had to decide which principles I wanted to integrate into the book. Then I had to imagine how to superimpose all of them so that they would work together. Finally, I had to calculate and write the text itself. It was indeed a lot of work — one year for the French version, one year for the English version — but the project was very motivating, so the creative phase was very satisfying and exciting; it makes the “work” aspect less noticeable.

For Pi, I went through several methods and prototypes. The fourth attempt was the right one, and that is the current method. Two years after creating it, I thought of adding the final phase — the spectator’s birthday — so I had to reshape the method to accommodate this new ending.

For both Babel and Pi, I also had to create the tools for my creation. It is a bit like wanting to paint a picture when no one has yet invented the paintbrush: before creating your painting, you first have to invent and make the brush, the tool of your creation. That can take time at the beginning, but it speeds up the process afterwards, making things easier for me.

As for my memorized deck, I did indeed create it from scratch in 2004, because I had a very specific idea. Since then, I have spent a lot of time analyzing the contents of my stack, by hand but also with research tools created by other magicians, including the brilliant Arnaud Chevrier — known as Twins on some magic forums. Thanks to these advanced analysis tools, I was able to carry out the research needed for Poker de Joffe.

In general, it is true that I like to work long and hard in advance, so that the result pays off when I am in front of the audience. Poker de Joffe or Pi required hours and hours of calculations, but during performance I have nothing left to do; everything was put in place long before. That is also what makes the method effective: the audience sees nothing because there is nothing to see, and spectators cannot imagine that I spent so much time just on that one effect. And I am also helped by my scientific studies — which I failed.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: You have translated more books on mentalism than on card magic. Was that by choice, or simply because those were the projects that came your way?

Vincent Hedan: In fact, most of my translations are done at the initiative of Marchand de Trucs, so it is their choice. I also tend to work for them on mentalism books because it is a field I know well. To hope to produce a good translation, of course you have to be good in both the source language and the target language, but you also need to know the subject well, otherwise you risk missing one of the author’s subtleties.

I have also translated a few books independently. In those cases, I chose the authors because they were friends and because I appreciated their work and ideas.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Although you don’t want to be put in a box, deep down, do you feel more like a magician or a mentalist?

Vincent Hedan: I am not comfortable with the clichés associated with either of these fields, so I do not really think in those terms. And since I do not particularly want to invent a new category either, I let my audience — whether laypeople or magicians — decide for themselves.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Which magicians have influenced you the most?

Vincent Hedan: When I was very young, I saw René Lavand perform on the TV show Attention Magie, and something about it really appealed to me. I also loved Juan Tamariz’s Best of Seminar; at the time, it was a French VHS tape. Years later, I realized that Earl Nelson’s philosophy had influenced me a great deal, because his book The Art of Close-Up Magic was the first specialized book I ever read. More recently, Derren Brown managed to create a very successful approach — which unfortunately produced far too many clones. Despite these magical influences, for years now I have been more inspired by cinema and non-magical literature. Artists such as Taniguchi, Shinkai, Oshii, Borges, Auster, and King have created works filled with fascinating magical ideas.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: During your lecture, I noticed a complete absence of humor at the spectators’ expense. You explain that if we are kind to them, they will be kind to us. Isn’t that simply in your nature?

Vincent Hedan: It is true that I have never liked humor at the audience’s expense, because a few times I have been the spectator on the receiving end of that kind of questionable “humor,” and I hated it. “Do not do to others what you would not want done to you.”

Beyond that, it is also simple logic. Imagine I approach a table of five people to perform magic. If I choose one of those five people as the “victim” and they become the target of all my jokes, there is a good chance the whole group will reject me in order to protect one of their own, rather than joining me in my momentum and all starting to make fun of one of their own.

I do not think performers who more or less gently make fun of their audience do it out of malice. Sometimes, it is simply because the magician is in a difficult situation — the stress of being in front of a group, or a mistake in the effect they are performing — and their reflex is to attack the other person. I have never found that this approach worked for me. And besides, I started performing in public very young; I was a child, so it would have been difficult for me to be aggressive at that age.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: With Multitude, you bring an old principle back to life and allow magicians to rediscover it. Even though information is everywhere and easily accessible, and there are more magicians than ever, how do you explain the fact that we can still miss these principles? Do you have any other principles in reserve?

Vincent Hedan: Perhaps it is a happy coincidence. For an old, forgotten principle to be “unearthed,” several factors are needed. First, the old principle has to be good and still usable, even years later. Then there has to be a curious magician who stumbles upon that principle by chance, often by reading old books. And finally, that principle has to appeal to that magician and inspire them. I have probably read dozens of old ideas that I felt were not for me, whereas another magician, because of their particular profile, might recognize their potential.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: You also released a book with your routines. Wasn’t that a little premature in your career? What did you want to share with your readers?

Vincent Hedan: I am not comparing myself to them at all, but Isaac Newton revolutionized mathematics before the age of 25, Orson Welles directed Citizen Kane at 26, Kurt Cobain died at 27, and so did Jean-Michel Basquiat. They were “young” and not exactly bad, so age is not really an issue.

In Your Mind Is My Playground in particular, I wanted to share routines that had an original starting point — often a film or a book — in the hope of encouraging the reader to look for inspiration everywhere except in the classics of magic and mentalism, while also offering simple and direct methods.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: For readers who have not yet had the chance to read your book, and without going into details, can you give us an example of a work that inspired you and how you translated it into magic?

Vincent Hedan: A good example from my book would be Zatoichi, a character imagined by Japanese novelist Kan Shimozawa, then developed by actor Shintaro Katsu in a series of 26 cult films released between 1962 and 1989. Zatoichi is a blind itinerant masseur, as well as a dice cheat and an expert in iaido, a Japanese sword technique. I strongly encourage you to watch at least the first film in the series. Zatoichi's blindness, counterbalanced by his physical ease and precision, is the source of many impressive and magical effects throughout those films.

In the Zatoichi effect, I simply borrowed the character and his blindness, so I perform the trick blind — finding a card in a shuffled deck. In the following effect, “You Will Be My Eyes,” I borrowed the structure of a scene from the eighth film in the series, and it becomes an opportunity to give the power to the spectator, who manages to divine things.

I developed around ten routines thanks to that film series. Inspiration can come from anywhere — preferably not from magic itself — and can be translated into your magic in many different ways.

 

Olivier Nicoleau: Do you have a favorite trick, whether it is yours or not? And a book that particularly influenced you?

Vincent Hedan: I have a tremendous amount of fun performing Pi; the presentation has several themes and moments that I love, and the effect seems truly impossible to the audience. To mention an effect that is not mine, I love Hofsinzer II by Stéphane Chenevière, described in his book Altitude.

For a magic book, it would perhaps be Mnemonica by Juan Tamariz, because it shows so many possibilities of an underestimated tool: the memorized deck. And for a very magical book, even though it does not officially belong to our field, it would be the collection Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges.