OPENINGSPREAD:^ SET^DESIGN:^ VICKY^ LEES.^
HANDMODEL:^ JONATHAN^ @HIRED^HANDS.^ SUIT&^ SHIRT:^ BEGGARS^ RUNRUBENS FILHO is a magician and founder of Abracademy
pull out the seven of spades and show it to him.
He gets me to sign my name on it. Then he
slides it back into the pack, puts the cards
back in their box and puts the box on the
table in front of us. “Now,” he says with a
grin, “the magic begins.” Filho is 51, tall,
handsome and infectiously enthusiastic
about the power of illusions. Born in
Brazil, he’s been a keen magician since
adolescence. He came to Britain in 2012
to work in advertising before, in 2015,
setting up Abracademy, to bring magic- and, in particular, the skills needed
to perform it – to the rest of us. “I think
magic has a such a positive twist,” he
says. “It brings this soft approach that’s
hard to explain, this role of creating
something beautiful.”
But he is also fascinated by the
relationship between magic and neuroscience and
psychology, and set up Academy Labs to explore this
connection. “Magic has lived in the ‘glitches’ of the
brain for a long time,” he says: “How you see things,
how you form beliefs, how you experience wonder.
And it has the capacity to create wonder by creating
something that people can’t explain. You just say
‘Wow’, and then comes: ‘How do you do that?’ So
we explore what happens when we experience
something like that. We’re very interested in going
deep, deep down into the brain.”
On this summer afternoon at Abracademy’s base
in Hackney’s Container Park, Filho has been trying
to create something beautiful, and new. We stand on
either side of a small felt-topped table – the cards in
their box between us – and Filho is a little nervous.
“Now, there are three ways we could get your card
out of the box,” he says. “We could use telekinesis
and draw it out... but we’re not going to do that. We
could make it rise up to the top of the pack... but
we’re not going to do that. Or...” He looks me in the
eye, that grin turning into puzzlement. “Do you hear
that? Do you hear anything?”
To be honest, at first I don’t. I’m confused for a
second. And then, a faint buzzing, as if Container
Park has a wasp problem. It’s getting louder and it’s
a little alarming. “Look behind you,” says Filho, with
mock amazement. “What’s that?”
Flying gently towards me from the far end of
the room is a drone, with my signed card hanging
by a wire. The room collapses into laughter and
applause, and a big sense of relief. “We really
weren’t sure if it was going to work,” Filho admits.