Creativity & Personality Anything is possible

By Navin Roepan aka Sranangblaine

FascinationMy fascination is magic!Magic is something that has always been intrigued me. It has that spe-cial added value to my life and my personality. Magic has been there for thousands of years and still till this day it exists and inspires people. The first time I was confronted with magic I was four years old. Back then I used to live in Paramaribo (Surinam), my birthplace. My moth-er did a simple magic trick on me and I was totally amazed by it and couldn’t figure it out how she managed it. Nowadays I still use that trick and bring it to people and even adults are amazed by this trick and don’t have any clue how it works. So what fascinates me about magic is that simple things can be convert-ed and presented as very difficult. The eye for detail makes differnce. It is an art to succeed this discipline with the help of your creative mind.This challenge is my drive and motivation in my life. Magic for meMagic is a way of exploring new insights, thinking out of the box and create new possibilities/illusions to convince, entertain, inspire and amaze other people about your concept or ideas.

Magic gives me new energy, it motivates me and gives me confidence. With magic I can be myself and it gives me the oppurtunity to inspire and entertain other people with my personal skills.

4 keywords I took my fascination ‘magic’ as a point of departure for the course Creativity & Personality. In the starting phase of my trip to concept development i choosed 4 important keywords which were mine bag-gage for my personal journey. Thinking about magic I selected 4 major keywords that popped out my brain during brainstorming. I picked the following keywords which were relevant for the divergent phase of my research: 1 Unimaginable 2 Illusions 3 Art 4 Supernatural

In the following pages you will see this keywords visualized in mood-boards to get a clearer image of my mind.

Goals InspirationsWhen researching into a fascination you barely can’t escape of set-ting goals. The goals will give you direction and focus towards concept development. I made a goal matrix which shows what I want to accomplish with certain forms/tools. The hearts in this matrix gives an indication of which goals i reached with which tools.

Inspirating is a motivating action or influence that results in creative works and productivity of all kinds. I will consisely describe which major influences leaded me to my final concept.

Buddytime On the 13th of September i went out with my buddy to the centre of Tilburg and we had an open minded conversation about our fascinations magic and time. We discussed the importancy and meaning of its towards our personal life. Along this interesting conversation we came to the essence of our fascina-tion. My buddy came up with the truism ‘enjoy every moment because time flies’. I like this statement because I got the same perspective of thinking. I came up with the truism ‘Anyting is possible’. I like this because its the truth and nothing but the truth. In the chapter Truism i will explain why. David Blaine David Blaine is my biggest source of inspiration for magic and has a huge in-fluence in my life concercing my drive and motivation. On the next page I will dedicate a chapter with special information.

Movies Personaly I don’t like reading books, I can say I am visually oriented. An im-portant part of my research was spended on watching inspirational magic dvd’s. These gave me new insights and perspectives. Nas Listening to his music I receive energy and motivation! Life experience (see Truism) Antwerp City (see chapter AC)

I visited museums, performed magic shows, conducted field/deskresearch, developed more techniques, watched movies and listened music for inpiration. In the following pages I will provide extensive information about these activities.

David BlaineAs i said before David Blaine is my biggest inspiration for magic! I even dedicated my artist name on him, Sranangblaine. It consists of my roots (Sranang) combined with the last name of David (Blaine).

Introduction David Blaine was born April 4, 1973 in Brooklyn New York. Patrie White, his single mother, raised him while taking on as many as three jobs. He never met his real father. At age four he saw a magician perform in a subway; he then decided to purchase his first trick, The Pencil Through the Card. Magic struck him because of its relationship with math and science. David’s grandmother was a gypsy, and passed down some tarot cards to him. Since he did not have the money to go to a magic shop, he spent countless hours in libraries researching magic. There he would read every book he could get his hands on and continued fiddling with his tarot cards. At age five, he learned what his dream was; after showing a neighbor an effect with the tarot cards, he saw for the first time the impact of magic can have emotionally on people. He immediately told his mom he wanted to be a showman. She encour-aged him in everyway. When David was 21, his mother died of ovarian cancer. She was 48 and they were very close. At that moment he decided to devote his life to magic. He is into magic ever since and it will never escape out of his mind. David Blaine became a stuntman after his idol, Houdini. His first stunt, getting buried alive for seven days, had the approval of Houdini’s granddaughter.He did the stunt to promote his second special, David Blaine: Magic Man. Since then, David has been frozen alive, trapped standing on a poll over a hun-dred feet from the ground, and viewed hanging from a crane over the River Thames bridge in London. He likes to get trapped in secluded areas with no food. Each stunt seems to be more dangerous. David Blaine will continue per-forming magic and stunts to his ‘audience’ for the rest of his life.

Why so special?The way he presents himself is calm, confident and natural. When he per-forms magic to the people he totally gets everyone’s attention. Each and every time he makes people questioning and amazed. He can adapt on every situation and finds a way to do magic on everyone. He is also a stuntman and he has been through several life risking situations. Why does he inspire me ? He inspires me on the fact that he is making things possible what on fore-hand is not possible. And in his biography he is telling that everything is possible if there is a need for it. ‘‘My only fear is unknown’’ ‘‘We are all capable of infinitely more than we believe’’

“ I think anybody can do any of these if they train. I don’t recommend it, but anybody could do it if there was a need ’’

Antwerp CityAntwerp is a nice city with lots of senses of art. For me it was a cool place to explore my fascination. I found a lot of images which were re-lated somehow to magic. I have seen a lot cool and mindblowing things in the city as well as in the museums. While exploring and enjoying Antwerp, my buddy gave me the assignment to perform streetmagic in the centre of Antwerp. I made a deck of cards appear and started to blow people minds. When I perform magic I am always touched by the emotionally reactions of people, it is never the same sometimes I make people scared, other times I shock them but most of the times they are happy to see magic. MAS Normally I am not that interested in visiting museums, but I just went open minded to the museum. Suprisely I found recognition of magic in a lot of artworks. One in particular caught my attention ‘Madonna by Jean Fouqeut’. The story behind the painting was another proove of my Truism, anything is possible. The fact that the artist in the 15th century made this artwork and managed to paint de angels in plastic what did not exist in that era. MHKA At first sight MHKA seemed like an boring museums with amaturistic artworks. When exposing myself to these artworks, suddenly these boring artworks became interesting. I inspected these artworks from a different perspective and it resulted in new insights for me. For a clearer image of my trip to Antwerp I made a moodboard.

Truism

My truism is that anything is possible, it is mainly formed by my per-sonal life experience. I was born in Surinam (Paramaribo) and lived there for 9 years. Back then we were not that prosperous. My mother couldn’t finish her edu-cation at high school due financial reasons.She worked seven days a week in the biggest fish factory in Surinam called Suna-Fish. I would describe my mother as a hard worker, a go-getter and a lovely person who worked around the clock to provide for me and my sister.

She made sure we would receive a formal education and more impor-tantly all the love in the world.Upon arriving in Holland, the final year of elementary school was successfully completed to move on to secondary school (theoretical programme) and secondary vocational education with a focus on mar-keting and communication, at ‘De Rooi Pannen’ in Tilburg. In 2009 I started the Communication – International Event, Music & Entertain-ment Studies (CO-IEMES) at the Fontys Academy for Creative Indus-tries. Scheduled to graduate and receive my Bachelor of Communica-tions in 2013, I registered my company ‘Blaine Entertainment’ as a sole proprietorship with the Chamber of Commerce on the 23rd of August in 2011. Blaine Entertainment is the next step in bringing the main performance arts of Sranangblaine, magic and breakdancing, to a wid-er public.

Motivation To fulfill my mother’s dream I started to study at Fontys ACI a Uni-versity of Apllied Science (HBO). Besides studying I am a dancer and magician, break dancing and magic are second nature to me, these are my passions and forms my identity. My mom likes the fact I have these passions but college must be the main priority and focus in my life according to her, she has always supported me in study for which I am forever thankful for. But never totally supported me encouraging my passions, for which I don’t blame her. It is a known mindset of the Surinamese culture. This gives me extra power for achieving my personal goals in order to show my mom that anything is possible.

I already proved this with a track record in break dancing. I succeed-ed to win the Dutch Bboy Championships five consecutive times with my crew/family Hustlekidz and we travelled all over the world together and won major competitions in LA, NYC, South Korea and many more. I am receiving more and more recognition for my pas-sions by my mom but what really is going to make her proud is see-ing me graduate. That’s the reason why I study with determination and will fulfill her dream by showing my Bachelor of communica-tion in my hand next year. After graduation I will completely focus on my company Blaine Entertainment. My mission is to bring ex-ceptional talent to the public. The vision is providing a better life for my family here and in Surinam by the earnings of my business, as my mother did for me while growing up.

ConceptAnything is possible This is the idea that you can make anything out of something with enough dedication and commitment! Anybody can accomplish his goals if there is a need.

Pop up entertainment To express my Truism to people i came up with the product ‘pop up entertainment’ by emerging interesting facts of my research.

What is it? Pop up entertainment is bringing exceptional entertainment to the public with combining my passions break dancing and magic. These disciplines will fuse in entertainment show that can only be brought to the public by me. This entertainment show will pop up at crowded places anywhere, like Amsterdam, Paris, NYC etc. just anywhere because anything is possible. I will explain my product by storytelling. Storytelling Hello my name is David and I want to share an amazing story of what I have seen yesterday. I went out to the city in Paris for shopping with my girlfriend Justine. I wanted to buy a new fresh outfit for a party next week, we spended hours and i just could not find the right combination. My girlfriend was totally mad on me being so fastidious! She wanted to leave and go home, on the way home we saw a crowded circle with a lot of exiting people. We were curious so we went to take a look.

There was this brown skinned guy with a huge spades tattoo all over his upper body. I assumed he was a magician and seeing all the people curious I grabbed my camera and started to record. As i pushed the record button he came at me and said David i need you for this next act. I was like how the hell did he know my name i never met him before! He mindfucked me already then he asked me do you maybe have a deck of cards by your side ? I answered no, he said ok i want you to do something fun. Just punch on my stomach as hard as you can, i was like sure i can do that. At the moment i punched him a whole deck of cards just ran out of his mouth. I coul’nt believe my eyes i just freezed for a moment. He said don’t be scared david it’s magic, now let me punch in your stomach as hard i can maybe it will happen the same. I laughed and said no thank you, after he told me to pick a card. I picked the ace of diamonds and shuffled it back into the deck. After he asked me, are you together here with somebody? I answered yes with my girl-friend. He told me to bring her in the front.

Justine came and then this guy asked me do you remember your card, i said yes its still here in my mind. Then he asked my girlfriend, did I ever met you before? she said no never. He respond and said you are a lier I was yesterday at your place and just placed one card in your underwear. She said no thats not possible, the guy told her to reach inside and there my card popped out with my signature on it! I could not believe my eyes because he never touched her. After this act he asked 52 people to step forward, and said there are 52 cards in a deck I am going to place in each and everyones mind a card just by send-ing it with my mind. Did everybody received one ? everybody responded with yes. He said ok I want do to a physical exercise with you and started to dance with everyone for like 10 minutes. After he said you feets must be hurting now right? Everybody responded tiredly yes, he said for you effort i have a present take a look in your shoe. Everybody reached inside and there just popped their cards out! I still can’t realize that he managed to do that! This was my story I wanted to share, I am going to sleep now otherwise I will lose my mind! Peace.

Concept Elaboration Medium: Intervention in the public space Technique used: Demonstrating, performing, processing existing material Scale: Global, person to person Time: Time shown in real time Agreements between performers: Interaction with participants or audience Style: Comical, Illusionist, overwhelming Audience/target group: Passers-by, participants, person to person, reality, interactive, guests Concrete form: Action/sound/performer Development story/line: Action, in time Message: Anything is possible Objectives: Confronting, fascinating, motivating, impressing, amusing

ReflectionThis advanced course has been fun and very inspirational for me, it helped me getting even deeper in my mind. I see myself as a creative person and during this course I real-ized that you never can be creative enough, creativity is limitless. When thinking about creativity I directly associ-ate it with art, something I have always been interested in. Art was also one of my keywords , for me art is way to tell a story by expressing your thoughts, concepts and ideas shaped in different forms and presented to people. This can be resulted in exhibitions, performances, paintings, tangible products etc..

During this course I have seen different kind of art which were related to my truism and just blowed my mind. I spent valuable time on developing my concept and I am happy with the result of reaching all my goals in this course. I will continue bringin magic to the public and spreading the message that anything is possible. I hope you enjoyed reading my magic report of the course Creativity & Personality. I want to thank everyone who helped me in this proces.

‘‘ Anything is possible if there is need’’ Sranangblaine

© Sranangblaine

29-10-2012