Rethinking the Rings: topographical spaces and digital bodies in Circus Oz’s inland tours
Rethinking the Rings: topographical spaces and digital bodies in Circus Oz’s inland tours Journal Article
Body, Space & Technology
- Author(s): Fuhrmann, A, Fensham, R, Stevens, K
- Published: 2023
- Volume: 22
Abstract: Emerging from the digital archive of Circus Oz are a multiplicity of visual images, pathways and memories that circulate around planes of past performances and their touring contexts; this paper explores the re-negotiation of topographical space and bodies that sits at the heart of the early Circus Oz tours to the Northern Territory. This paper focuses on the power of the ever-widening and rippling rings as a symbolic frame for circus performance and the impacts that both establishing and rethinking alternative centres has had for one arts company. Specifically, through the exploration of detail extracted from maps, cultural data and the historical record, this paper argues that Circus Oz’s engagement with remote Indigenous communities in Arnhem Land and Central Australia in this early period ultimately informed an intermittent but nonetheless persistent experimental corporeal practice – still present in the digital bodies of recordings available in the Living Archive and on the University of Melbourne Theatre and Dance Platform, and the visualization and interpretation of these tours presented on the People, Places and Radical Exchanges project website.