ABSTRACT
The Belgian artist Kris Verdonck creates installations and performance pieces that feature human performers, machines and objects. The vehicle of mediation in the case of Verdonck's Dancer series is, purely, action within situation. Verdonck's turn to the term dancer' normally someone so lithe and agile invites this humanizing move. Further, he conceives his objects' anthropomorphism in a theatrical paradigm. Brown, no less than Verdonck, is an advocate of actuality, authenticity, sincerity. An advertisement on the facing page, in pastiche mid-Victorian style, promotes Brown's Twitter feed. As Hill observes, Brown creates mind traps with his audience where he appears to go beyond the concept of magic 'it's not a trick', 'it's just him'. The personae of magicians such as Blaine and Brown fall somewhere in between, as show people appearing in a routine who nonetheless perform as themselves in scenarios that appear to be open to failure.
