Contested Zones: Circus Science Collaboration on Issues of Australian Ecologies
摘要
This chapter focuses on evaluating how circus methodologies were utilised for communicating avian migratory challenges in the ecologically unique Moreton Bay wetlands, Queensland, Australia. Circus in this instance became both the subject of the research and the method of knowledge production as the practice itself was core to narrating and evaluating the viability of using embodied methods to communicate scientific data. The project focused on Moreton Bay on the East Asian—Australasian Flyway (EAAF), a migratory pathway spanning 22 countries and carrying over 50 million migrating birds each year. However, areas of the flyway are subject to large-scale, and rapid economic development, and many waterbird populations therein are threatened or in decline (Barry and Suliman 2022). Entitled “Climatescape,” the project was a collaboration between social science and artistic researchers and Vulcana Circus artists. It suggests that critical information about industrial and human mobility expansions, climate change escalation, and corresponding effects on native species can be selected, organised, and disseminated creatively to not only enhance understanding of why species are disappearing in Moreton Bay but also to evaluate how circus may be utilised to communicate ecological challenges due to human impact.