Immerse yourself in a spellbinding realm where magic and art intertwine seamlessly, guided by the extraordinary Jeanette Andrews. From the tender age of four, Andrews has woven illusions and artistry into a breathtaking tapestry, earning accolades as a trailblazer in her field. Fresh off a triumphant, sold-out spectacle at MIT and crowned a 2023-2024 National Arts Club Fellow, Andrews is now set to unveil her latest opus, “magi.cia.n,” within the enchanting confines of the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art.”
Within the captivating narrative of “magi.cia.n,” she delves into the clandestine world of trickery and deception, drawing inspiration from a declassified CIA manual. Unveiling secrets once reserved for covert agents, this groundbreaking exhibition unfolds with a sculptural tome titled “The Manual,” a spellbinding video work named “The Attention,” and even the shoelaces adorning museum guards – each element whispers a hidden message, inviting you to decipher the enigma within.
In the alchemy of her craft, Jeanette Andrews, an architect of wonder, elevates the mundane to the extraordinary through her meticulous attention to detail. With a performance art style that is uniquely hers, she intertwines sensory anomalies, scientific anecdotes, and a generous dose of artistic flair. In her magical hands, the ordinary becomes an extraordinary journey, where profound philosophical ideas come alive in tangible, enchanting ways.
Join us in this cybernetic rendezvous, where the magic of Jeanette Andrews comes alive in pixels and bytes, creating an experience that defies the ordinary and invites you into a realm of extraordinary wonder.
Your work frequently delves into profound philosophical themes like knowledge, truth, and perception. I’m interested in understanding how you perceive the function of magic in translating these abstract ideas into tangible, experiential moments for your audience. Could you share your thoughts on the interplay between magic and these conceptual realms in your artistic practice?
I feel like magic is a special performance form, in that it specializes in dealing with concepts that are hard to define or experience in other manufactured ways, such as mystery, wonder, and the impossible. By extension, I think there is the ability to explore a lot of adjacent conceptual topics that might otherwise be harder to manifest in a physical performance form in this sort of direct way.
Your vision involves restoring magic to its esteemed “golden age” as a prestigious art form. How do you see the evolution or departure of magic from that historical status, and how does your work play a role in bringing it back to prominence?
With the caveat here that I’m not a magic historian, there were a number of social and economic factors that seemed to contribute to this. (i.e. the rise and fall of vaudeville, the rise of the moving image, shorten time frames for performances, The Great Depression, etc. all contributing to the aesthetic and narrative components having to be stripped away.) One of the most important magic figures of our time, Max Maven (I believe he is noted as being the most prolific inventor in terms of published magic effects that has ever lived), said the following: “The magicians of the 20th century accomplished a great feat; they took something truly profound and rendered it trivial.”
I’ll add that this is by no fault of any particular person or group, just a combination of many external factors.
In the “golden age of magic” that you talk about, magic was either presented as sophisticated performance in drawing rooms or parlors, or later, in larger theatrical productions. These productions featured magic with a full narrative plot and were sometimes presented essentially as short plays. Performers would then combine these short vignettes into a full evening performance with very high production value and more classic narrative arcs.
It is my goal to pay homage to this history by bringing back well-thought-out aesthetics and contexts, and by integrating magic into conversations with other concepts or mediums.
I would be thrilled for my work to play a role in bringing it back to prominence in this way. In my early teens, I became really interested in philosophy and was continually drawn towards aesthetics, realizing that many of the same questions that philosophers were using art to investigate (what constitutes knowledge and truth, sensory perception, etc.) are fundamental to magic.
So, given that I was personally really interested in these questions and saw the overlap between philosophy, art, and magic, that seemed like such a natural path forward. At that point in my early teens, I also became aware of the longer arc of magic history and that magic had been a much more well-respected cultural art form than it was during my childhood in the ’90s. I felt like, since I was interested in these philosophical questions that were often explored through art, that expression finally made sense to me. Once I started to think about what combining these things might look like, the idea of recontextualizing magic as a performance art form (and now currently viewing it also as a live thought experiment) all seemed to gel.
Your artistic approach effortlessly weaves together sensory anomalies, art, and scientific anecdotes. Could you share insights into how you navigate the intersections of these disciplines, and how each element enhances the overall impact of your performances and artworks?
Candidly, it’s always an ongoing process! I’m always trying to research the topics that are informing my work as much as I can.
I think interweaving scientific and the philosophical often plays well off each other, as sometimes philosophical inquiry is what gives birth to scientific advancement, etc., and vice versa. I know that different modes of thinking resonate with different viewers in different ways, as they do for me as well. There are some days or moments when I might be in a mood to think more deeply about an abstract concept, or other moments where I find that concrete factual data resonates more.
I’m trying to play with creating these layers in my work so that people have the opportunity to engage with what resonates with them.
The concept behind your recent commission, “magi.cia.n,” originates from a declassified CIA manual on trickery and deception. I’m curious about your research process for projects and what specifically attracted you to this unique source material?
I first read “The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception” by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace when it came out in 2010. It was simultaneously one of the most fascinating and bone-chilling things I have ever encountered, and it stuck with me.
A couple of things that struck me about it were that it took the concepts usually utilized by magicians for performances of fun and delight but turned them on their heads, utilizing them for ultimate nefarious means. This project was founded under the umbrella budget of MK Ultra – the CIA’s notorious mind control initiative, amidst a lot of Castro assassination attempts, etc., via poison.
I also found it intriguing as it was the first and only thing I’ve still seen to this day that explicitly outlines sleight of hand adaptations for women, as there was a section on training female operatives. I wasn’t interested in exploring this in my work but personally found it interesting.
In my conversations with Boca Raton Museum of Art curator, Kathleen Goncharov, early in the commissioning process, we had been speaking about a lot of magic and magic-adjacent books, and I mentioned that one in our conversation. She immediately looked at me and said, “Do that! Do that.”
Honestly, I didn’t have any idea what that would look like or be at the time, and iterated through what seemed like innumerable versions of completely different formats for exploring this concept before landing on the final piece.
And yes, I have a VERY research-heavy process. I try to be as detailed in my research for projects as possible, consulting a wide variety of source material from primary historic sources, biographies, TV shows, and pop culture, interviews – sometimes even children’s books. I find it helpful to have many different perspectives on the main topic I’m interested in, as well as broadening out to adjacent neighboring topics for more context.
“‘magi.cia.n” juxtaposes magic and espionage, revealing parallel actions with different intentions. How do you balance the storytelling elements in your work to convey both the similarities and disparities between these two seemingly distinct worlds?
For this piece, it was a really straightforward story, conveying the overlapping technical gestures with totally different intentions and results. I felt like directly layering and juxtaposing the worlds on top of each other or flipping back and forth in a 1:1 way with variation, and showing the different start and end points, was the most efficient way to convey this idea. I have not done a lot of explicit storytelling/narrative in my work, so even the minor step into it in this piece certainly taught me a lot.
The sculptural book, “The Manual,” encourages visitors to engage by flipping through its pages. Can you share your vision regarding audience participation in your installations and elaborate on the role it plays in enriching the overall experience?
Interestingly, it originally was not intended to be an interactive piece! I set out to make something completely different, but along the way, throughout many versions, realized that it could actually be interactive with some carefully designed user experience components built-in. In my conversations with a number of people, I realized that having “The Manual” magically transform from one book into another in visitors’ own hands not only created a more powerful magic effect but also portrayed the messaging of the overall piece more concretely.
In your video work, “The Attention,” you use color to visually distinguish between the magician and the spy while highlighting shared skills. Could you expand on the thought process behind your visual choices in representing these parallel worlds and characters?
I have a really strange relationship with color—often finding it uneasy or jarring. I wanted a way to convey that the worlds were, in fact, very similar in terms of gesture, yet two distinct spheres. The most visually clear way to do this, in my mind, was by changing the color palette of the two worlds/personas (all black/black and white for the magician, and all gray, with the inclusion of maroon for the spy persona).
The inclusion of shoelaces worn by museum guards carrying a secret message in “magi.cia.n” adds a subtle but intriguing dimension. Can you shed light on the symbolic significance of shoelaces within the context of the installation?
The tying of shoelaces to convey a secret message was included in The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace. It was one of my favorite things in the book, and I wanted to draw inspiration from it but also adapt it for my piece, of course.
The wall text and a diagram at the museum convey that different tying patterns communicate different messages. It was my hope that, in keeping with the piece’s concept of the careful focusing of attention, the laces would inspire viewers to look closely at what even seems like the most commonplace and insignificant objects around them. The inclusion of Morse code on the shoelaces is another layer of sharing a coded message that draws from my prior work “In Plain Listen.” Finally, it was a way to bring one of the scenes in the film (the magical alignment of two different lengths of shoelaces to reveal a Morse code message to be decoded) into the physical museum space (albeit the laces in the film and the ones worn by a Museum staff have different messages!).
“magi.cia.n” underscores the importance of intention in actions. How do you explore the relationship between intention and the physical execution of magic and espionage in your performances, and what reactions or reflections do you aim to evoke from your audience?
One of the things that was most interesting to me to explore in this piece was how the same gesture, concept, etc., can have an opposite ending based on intent. I found it really fascinating to explore how one’s technical background and expertise totally shapes the lenses through which one views the world and how people could be witnessing the same event, can have two totally different experiences or interpretations of it based on their background knowledge.
Your works have been commissioned for various venues, including museums and corporate events. How does the context of the space influence your artistic decisions, and what considerations do you take into account when creating site-specific installations?
The context and space absolutely change pretty much everything from my end! As I do talks, workshops, and programs with corporations as well, obviously, those spaces and goals are very different and also usually have a very short time frame (i.e., coming in and doing a short interactive talk for a singular event) versus a year-and-a-half-long, site-specific museum commission. So, they are just two totally different animals.
The thing that does bridge them is that I always want to create a thoroughly detailed experience that serves to be thought-provoking.
Given your illustrious career that started at the age of four, could you take us back to the beginning? What was the first magic trick you ever performed, and how did that initial experience shape your perception of magic as both an art form and a lifelong pursuit?
This is a great question! I have thought so much about the first magic trick I performed, but not necessarily in this way. The first magic trick I performed was often referred to as the “ball in vase,” a classic in magic sets for well over 100 years. It’s a strongly visual effect (as is most magic set and children’s magic), but I am honestly not sure if that early memory informs my thoughts on magic as a potential art form. What did, in a loose way, was the fact that the first magic I was ever exposed to was a TV special by Siegfried and Roy.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, that show was really singular for its era. It employed the best Broadway costume and set designers, first-of-its-kind stagecraft techniques, and lighting. It also somewhat mirrored that golden age of magic in terms of having a narrative arc in numerous pieces of magic. Essentially, I was seeing a high-end Broadway production combined with a magic performance. I also spent my childhood reading and rereading the Siegfried and Roy autobiography, which details their entire career and their lifelong, successful pursuit of magic. I think it informed my view that it was a completely feasible path in life to take.
As you look forward, what legacy do you aspire to create in the realms of magic and performance art? How do you see your work influencing upcoming generations of artists and changing perceptions of magic as an art form?
Honestly, I would be so honored to have anything I create be inspiring. I feel like we all make work hoping that it connects with somebody in some way, and that’s the greatest thing we could ever hope for. Quite honestly, I am really focused on just trying to challenge my own work and process and the public perception of the field, and if I can play a part in that, I would be thrilled!
That being said, I have had the absolute privilege of working with younger magicians and people in the arts, and that has been one of my greatest joys.