This piece explores the boundary between reality and illusion. In Buddhism, there is a well-known idea that all phenomena are ultimately illusory—that what we take as “real” is only a construction shaped by perception, belief, and habit. By performing magic without its material apparatus, I sought to collapse the distinction between authentic illusion and authentic reality—if both rest on collective agreement and perceptual consensus, what differentiates them?


For the college’s senior party, I signed up to be the “magician,” despite having absolutely no idea how to perform real magic. Instead of learning traditional sleight-of-hand, my friend Cae and I created our own form of “magic”: a series of invented, ritual-like actions and improvised tricks that looked convincing only if the audience chose to believe them. We wandered in circles around people as if performing sacred gestures, lifted our arms as if holding a deck of cards, and executed familiar magic-show motions—but with no props, no hidden mechanisms, and nothing tangible in our hands.


The video documents fragments of the performance—the gestures, the improvisations, and the small, unscripted reactions from people around us. Rather than proving whether the illusion “worked,” the footage records the shifting atmosphere we created together. In this sense, the boundary between illusion and reality appears less like a line and more like a space continually formed in real time, through gesture, expectation, and the shared willingness to let something ephemeral take shape.
这个作品意在探索现实与幻想的边界。佛教相信：一切现象皆是虚妄，我们认定的“现实”往往只是由感知、相信与习惯所构成的投射。在这个作品里，我尝试用一个没有任何道具的魔术表演，去松动“真实幻象”与“真实现实”的区别。如果两者都依靠集体的共识与感知来成立，那么它们究竟有什么不同？


在大学的毕业派对上，我报名表演魔术，虽然我其实完全不会魔术。我和我的“魔术助理”——其实就是朋友 Cae——一起发明了一系列属于我们的“魔术”：例如没有扑克牌的扑克牌表演，或是看起来像仪式的动作（其实只是绕着观众转圈）。我们模仿那些常见的魔术手势，但整个过程没有任何道具，也没有真正的魔术技巧。


视频记录了这场表演的一些片段以及周围观众的反应。它并不是为了证明魔法有没有“成功”，而是记录我们当下共同营造出的那种氛围。从某个角度来看，现实与幻象之间似乎并没有一条明确的分界，而更像是一种在当下不断被生成的空间，由动作、期待，以及人们愿意让某种短暂的东西在此刻成形的那份共同心态所构成。