{"id":4071,"date":"2013-02-02T19:30:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T18:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.astroblastro.com\/?p=4071"},"modified":"2013-02-02T19:30:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T18:30:49","slug":"pickpocket-apollo-robbins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/?p=4071","title":{"rendered":"Pickpocket: Apollo Robbins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read this excellent New Yorker profile on\u00a0professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins.<\/a>\u00a0He’s a\u00a0fascinating\u00a0performer to watch.\u00a0Here is a link to a video<\/a>\u00a0introducing his techniques.<\/p>\n

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What I particularly\u00a0like about the profile is what he says about the\u00a0choreography\u00a0of people’s\u00a0attention, a particularly important principal in telling stories or making theater. He says,\u00a0\u201cattention is like water. It flows. It\u2019s liquid. You create channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s stepping outside yourself and seeing through the other person\u2019s eyes, thinking through the other person\u2019s mind, but it\u2019s happening on a subconscious level.\u201d He went on, \u201cI can analyze how I do things, but the actual doing it\u2014when the synapses just start firing\u2014I can\u2019t explain.\u201d<\/p>\n

“A lot of magic is designed to appeal to people visually, but what I\u2019m trying to affect is their minds, their moods, their perceptions,\u201d he told me. \u201cMy goal\u00a0isn’t\u00a0to hurt them or to bewilder them with a puzzle but to challenge their maps of reality.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Challenging a person’s map of reality is a tall order. It\u00a0necessarily\u00a0means getting up close to your audience, and in a pickpocket’s case litterally encroaching on\u00a0their personal space. Approaching a person head-on will make them immediately uncomfortable.\u00a0\u201cSo, what I do is I give you a point of focus, say a coin. Then I break eye contact by looking down, and I pivot around the point of focus, stepping forward in an arc, or a semicircle, till I\u2019m in your space.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this case the fixed point is the channel that diverts attention and allows the artist to swoop in\u00a0undetected and get very close. Close enough to rifle around in the someone’s pocket and do some rearranging. “Not to\u00a0hurt them or to bewilder them, but to challenge their maps of reality.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read this excellent New Yorker profile on\u00a0professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins.\u00a0He’s a\u00a0fascinating\u00a0performer to watch.\u00a0Here is a link to a video\u00a0introducing his techniques. What I particularly\u00a0like about the profile is what he says about the\u00a0choreography\u00a0of people’s\u00a0attention, a particularly important principal in telling stories or making theater. He says,\u00a0\u201cattention is like water. It flows. It\u2019s liquid. You create…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[10,407,408],"class_list":["post-4071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre-artists","tag-links","tag-new-yorker","tag-pickpocket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4071"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4071\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astroblastro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}