Documents 

This studio-based research project explores ideas of gender performance through the digital manipulation of aerial acrobatics, resulting in a series of video works and installations. This paper explains the processes, artworks and conceptual developments of this project. Dubiously Wholesome’s focus on gender performance began as an interrogation of what it means to identify as female in contemporary society and how manifestations of gender are used to create an identity that interacts with the complexities of everyday life. An investigation into Judith Butler’s ideas of gender as a social performance instigated the project’s conceptual framework. This resulted in artworks that explore gender scripted from social repetition and then performed by the individual, whereupon the repetition works to validate gender signifiers and “instate” sex as naturalistic. The integration of aerial acrobatics into the project’s studio practice acted as both an aesthetic tool and a research methodology where my experience as a professional aerial performer informed my conceptual framework. The images created through this digital manipulation of aerial acrobatics were interspersed with fairytale imagery from Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, drawing from the tales’ positions as social commentator and manipulator to subvert accepted views on gender roles. In my work, I used the idea of gender as performative and interpreted it, not through a text-based idea of script, but through an analogy of aerial performance. In this analogy, the red fabric I am suspended from came to represent the gender signifiers through which the body is bound by social constructions. The manipulation of the fabric around the body suggests the performativity of gender and that, like an aerial performance, gender is learned, rehearsed and performed. [author summary]

This article outlines the role of accounting information in circus in Australia in the approximate period 1847-1963. Responding to the call for an increased historical narrative in accounting, we have studied the literature, documentation and personal memoirs concerning circus in Australia. From our examination, we have abstracted and analysed material that expresses, or implies, the use of accounting information. Themes identified include the magnitude and nature of capital investments; ticket pricing and revenues; the nature and composition of operational costs; standards of internal control; insolvencies and liquidations. We have established that, despite elementary levels of education, many circus people exhibited an intuitive grasp of fundamental accounting principles, albeit in a rudimentary form. Nevertheless, since financial and management reporting practises were typically unsystematic, and even non-existent, in all but the largest circus enterprises, Australian circus management may not have been optimized. [editor summary]

Circus communities have always held a fascination for their audiences. The color, the skill, the artistry, and the exotic animals as well as the clowns, tents, and sawdust are all part of the magic of the circus. This chapter explores how circus personnel of all ages interact among themselves and with outside groups and individuals, including their audiences, with a view to ensuring the continuation of traditional circus lifestyles and circus entertainment. Interviews were held with personnel from Australian circuses at four sites and the data were examined in the light of Johnson and Johnson's (1998 connections: Journal of the Australasian Association for Cooperative Education, 5(1), 4–10) theory of cooperative communities. The results foreground the circus as a colorful and exciting cooperative community which has many lessons to teach its audiences. [editor summary]