Cardistry Vs Magic - Is cardistry harmful for magic and what role does it play?

[Avendsin]

Hey,
So a few days ago I took part in an online discussion about the role of cardistry and card flourishing in magic. Many interesting questions were brought up such as should you do flourishing in a magic performance? Is cardistry harming magic? So on and so forth. Anyhow, in the end I thought it'd be fun to make a video to discuss this topic further with you guys and to share what my thoughts are on this matter. So here it is, let me know what you think what your view and thoughts on this topic is.

P.S. Please note that anything said in the video is my personal opinion and you might agree or disagree. So keep in mind I am not aiming a dig at anyone or anyone's opinion and am hoping for a nice, insightful, and informative exchange of opinion and ideas.
Cheerio!

 

[MattieuZ1]

Hey,
So a few days ago I took part in an online discussion about the role of cardistry and card flourishing in magic. Many interesting questions were brought up such as should you do flourishing in a magic performance? Is cardistry harming magic? So on and so forth. Anyhow, in the end I thought it'd be fun to make a video to discuss this topic further with you guys and to share what my thoughts are on this matter. So here it is, let me know what you think what your view and thoughts on this topic is.

P.S. Please note that anything said in the video is my personal opinion and you might agree or disagree. So keep in mind I am not aiming a dig at anyone or anyone's opinion and am hoping for a nice, insightful, and informative exchange of opinion and ideas.
Cheerio!

I think there's a lot of controversy surrounding cardistry depending on where the opinions are coming from. In the magic community, I feel as if there are the traditional magicians who feel that magic is being destroyed by all these darn millennial magicians with their fancy card flourishing, which I personally disagree with.

Cardistry as an art form is completely different from cardistry as magic. There are creators like PigCake, who is a fine magician, who despise cardistry, but only because they view cardistry as this thing that 12-13 year old magicians do to be "cool", something to show off. Imagine walking up to a group of people and instead of showing them a card trick, doing a weird flourish or something. Something magicians don't realize is that for laymen, just carrying around a deck of cards with you is already bizarre enough and just waving it around doing strange packet cuts and one handed fans isn't going to entertain them, probably won't impress them, and might turn them off to anything else you might want to do with the cards.

Cardistry as an art form is completely different. I personally love watching people who make cardistry videos because it takes more skill than just a fancy packet cut. However, cardistry is extremely niche to the magic/flourishing community because anyone who doesn't do cardistry or magic might think a cardistry video is impressive, but just extremely unrelatable, geeky/nerdy, and won't pursue it any further.

In my personal opinion, cardistry can enhance magic and be it's own separate thing, but never it's own thing. Never just do a Sybil cut expecting an audience to be impressed because they just witnessed nothing. Instead, turn it into a production or a gambling routine to show off "skill" and cement into the spectators minds than you know what's up with cards.

 

[Avendsin]

I think there's a lot of controversy surrounding cardistry depending on where the opinions are coming from. In the magic community, I feel as if there are the traditional magicians who feel that magic is being destroyed by all these darn millennial magicians with their fancy card flourishing, which I personally disagree with.

Cardistry as an art form is completely different from cardistry as magic. There are creators like PigCake, who is a fine magician, who despise cardistry, but only because they view cardistry as this thing that 12-13 year old magicians do to be "cool", something to show off. Imagine walking up to a group of people and instead of showing them a card trick, doing a weird flourish or something. Something magicians don't realize is that for laymen, just carrying around a deck of cards with you is already bizarre enough and just waving it around doing strange packet cuts and one handed fans isn't going to entertain them, probably won't impress them, and might turn them off to anything else you might want to do with the cards.

Cardistry as an art form is completely different. I personally love watching people who make cardistry videos because it takes more skill than just a fancy packet cut. However, cardistry is extremely niche to the magic/flourishing community because anyone who doesn't do cardistry or magic might think a cardistry video is impressive, but just extremely unrelatable, geeky/nerdy, and won't pursue it any further.

In my personal opinion, cardistry can enhance magic and be it's own separate thing, but never it's own thing. Never just do a Sybil cut expecting an audience to be impressed because they just witnessed nothing. Instead, turn it into a production or a gambling routine to show off "skill" and cement into the spectators minds than you know what's up with cards.

I think your character as a magician is a major determining factor on what role cardistry plays in your performance. Blaine for example does not do flourishing and I cannot even imagine him doing cardistry but it is due to the character he portrays when performing (And his performance style). Pigcake as well, although I do not hate cardistry, I do believe that it should not be overdone in a magic performance and it should be used only when it's relevant or fits the theme of the routine.

But I do think that on its own cardistry is an art form and it is developing and growing further. So they're two separate art forms that share the same instrument so to speak.

 

[CaseyRudd]

In my personal opinion, cardistry can enhance magic and be it's own separate thing, but never it's own thing. Never just do a Sybil cut expecting an audience to be impressed because they just witnessed nothing.

Heavily disagree with this. Cardistry is most definitely its own thing, and the results are reflecting this. Most of the top upvoted videos on Reddit that make it to the front page that relate to cards are cardistry videos and not magic. Cardistry is reaching people at a relatively large rate and being received very well by laymen.

Guys like John Stessel and Sean O have really nailed their strategy with getting cardistry more exposure on Reddit and other social media. You have brands like Fontaine Cards that have exploded into the mainstream and have gotten a huge amount of new people to pick up a deck of cards and learn cardistry, not magic. Recent collaborations with fashion and skate brands such as Guess Jeans and Ripndip also reflect that cardistry isn't some obscure hobby for nerds and isn't relatable. It's growing faster than ever before and to say that people aren't impressed or don't care is rather ignorant.

 

[MattieuZ1]

Heavily disagree with this. Cardistry is most definitely its own thing, and the results are reflecting this. Most of the top upvoted videos on Reddit that make it to the front page that relate to cards are cardistry videos and not magic. Cardistry is reaching people at a relatively large rate and being received very well by laymen.

Guys like John Stessel and Sean O have really nailed their strategy with getting cardistry more exposure on Reddit and other social media. You have brands like Fontaine Cards that have exploded into the mainstream and have gotten a huge amount of new people to pick up a deck of cards and learn cardistry, not magic. Recent collaborations with fashion and skate brands such as Guess Jeans and Ripndip also reflect that cardistry isn't some obscure hobby for nerds and isn't relatable. It's growing faster than ever before and to say that people aren't impressed or don't care is rather ignorant.

I wasn't talking about cardistry as an art form when I ripped on it, more about people who treat cardistry the same as magic, I should have been more clear. I agree that cardistry is becoming more and more mainstream, there are just as many cardistry focused decks as there are magic decks. Virtuosos and Fontaines are becoming some of the most sought after decks.

However, one of my largest pet peeves is when people treat cardistry like magic. One, I had a young magician/cardist (14y/o) just getting into cards come to me to show a routine and in the middle of his routine, he did a fancy multi-packet cut right after a trick and when I looked at his face to see what was up because I was confused as to what was happening, and he just was waiting for a reaction like it was a stand-alone trick. I was impressed he had learned it so fast, but it didn't really have any intimacy pr point to it, it was more a flash of technical skill in the middle of a show.

I love cardistry when it's performed for me, but I've always seen cardistry as more like a ballet rather than an intimate performance like magic shows. I can't really see someone going out on the streets to perform cardistry, not even as a busking type of show, and I don't know how someone would perform cardistry live to a laymen audience even in a stage setting, perhaps like card maniuplationists like Yu-Ho-Jin. As of right now, cardistry lacks the intimacy and astonishment of the impossible that makes magic so appealing to laymen and I think the way it works around that problem is through the beauty of film-making and editing. I didn't mean to take anything away from cardistry, I just believe that performing just cardistry is completely separate from performing just magic and one should never treat one like the other.