Legerdemain (Video), 2015
Digital video, 09:10, 640p

Legerdemain Project Statement

leger = light
de = of
main = hand

When I was a child, I used to play blackjack with my father. He always cheated with obvious gusto. He always won. I never inherited his effortless confidence. However, he never gambled and I inherited that trait. Gambling makes me nervous. Gambling with time is comfortable.

My mother was preternaturally adept at shuffling cards. She had a deliberate grace about her fingertips whilst she crisply snapped and shuffled the cards. She’d bend them to the point of breaking, but they would never crease. I never took after my mother in that regard. I remain grossly inept at shuffling cards.

I got this deck of playing cards from the customer service desk of an airline. The flight was about half a day delayed, and to stay their customers’ growling boredom the airline staff offered tiny bags of chips, cans of soda and other miscellany. I took a can of Coke and this deck of cards.

For the life of me I can’t remember the rules of any card games despite the fact that I must have spent hundreds of hours playing them. Looking up those rules would not matter much anyway: they would just flow out of my memory again.

About a week or so after landing, I unwrapped the plastic covering the deck of playing cards.