The Magic Memories (150)

Hello everyone!

Today’s topics are: Preview to Giro d’italia 2023; Ca(r)davre Exquis; Abracadabra Wine

These are The Magic Memories 150, gone online Sunday, November 12th, 2023, at 0:07h sharp.

All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.

As you are reading this I’m on the road in the South of Switzerland and Italy (Muttenz – Brissago – Cherasco – Torino – Castellamonte – Torino – Florence – Torino – Muttenz).

Preview to Giro d’Italia 2023

Right now (SUN, 12th NOV 2023, at 0:07 h) I will be sessioning with Peter Samelson, GP Varola and Mauro Massironi in a private house on the Lake Maggiore, in Switzerland, and at 5 minutes from the Italian border.

On Sunday afternoon I’ll be off to Cherasco to visit Don Silvio about whom I have reported several times – I look very much forward to study in his library that boasts well over 100’000 magic books, interrupted by sessions with magic friends, and in-between a few lunches and dinners honoring the Piemontese tradition 🙂

I also look forward to visiting my friends of the Magic Club in Torino, of which I’m an honorary member: The Club Amici Della Magia have an outstanding club room and some world-class members, Arturo Brachetti (THE magical quick change artist), Alexander (a TV star in Italy) and Marco Aimone (just back from the Magic Castle) being just three of them.

Then Florence, to see my publisher Francesco Mugnai to talk about upcoming translations of Sharing Secrets and other books… and meet up with Giacomo Bertini (the coin expert and organizer of the International Close-up Symposium), Simone Venturi (lawyer, translator and historian), Francesco Di Luciano (Italian translator of Erdnase, as well as the friends from the Magic Club Florence.

Anyway, I will tell you more upon my return in The Magic Memories 152 (NOV 26th).

Due to my traveling this and the next The Magic Memories will be short ones. Still, I hope that the following item finds your interest.

Ca(r)davre Exquis

There is a genre called “Art Games”, of which Cadavre Exquis, invented by the Surrealists, is probably best known.

It can be played wonderfully  with the family or a team. In it you take a sheet of paper and draw something at the top edge without the others seeing it, a tree, a head, a mountain peak, anything that comes to mind.

Then you fold the portion of the paper containing the drawing to the back of the sheet (try a portion of one or two inches).

Now you pass the paper over to the next participant who again draws anything on the new top of the sheet, folds it back and passes it over to the next. And so on.

At the end, the sheet of paper is unfolded revealing some kind of absurd drawing composed of the parts each participant previously drew.

To see a few examples CLICK HERE.

I was reading this in the column of Hans Ulrich Obrist, who is the director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, and it occurred to me that at the next gathering with fellow magicians you could try this by taking a deck of cards, the first does something with it, hands it to the next who does something else with it, and you end up with a performance piece.

Here is an idea to start: The first arranges the Aces on top of the deck (secretly by culling), the second does a false shuffle retaining the Aces on top, the third produces them magically, the fourth does some trick with it, etc.

Maybe you film it and put it on YouTube… remember to mention these The Magic Memories 🙂

Abracadabra Wine

As a little night cap for today’s blog, here is a wine from Spain that my friend Xavier Solar from Barcelona sent in.

The wine is really inexpensive, and they probably send out anywhere in the world. I have not tried it, yet, but plan to do so soon. To know more CLICK HERE.

Wish you all an excellent week!

Roberto Giobbi