Circus Scapes: An Inquiry into Global Arts and Local Performances

With this paper, I will examine the role of global knowledge flows and labor mobility in establishing and advancing a creative career. The focus is on the contemporary circus industry, characterized by human-only performances with a focus on acrobatic skill, incorporating theatrical elements and dance, and generally consisting of solo, duo, or trio acts (Trapp 2020).

Applying the approach of Larissa Buchholz (2022), I describe circus performance both as a form of art and in terms of economic interaction, thereby showing that the labor market for circus performers includes not only the renting of labor power, which takes place in a specific locality, but also artistic compositions that can be marketed globally.

Based on interviews with circus arts scholars and performers currently active in South Africa and the EU, this paper will investigate the role that globalization, technological advances, and mobility have played in the development of contemporary circus performances around the globe.

I use the interaction forms of competition, cooperation, collaboration, and emulation as a framework to describe the networks and information flows that define contemporary circus performance. With these categories, I explore the possibility of describing the labor market of circus performers as a circus scape, in which ideas and inspiration for artistic acts flow freely across borders (Appadurai 1990), where, however, the physical presence of the circus performer is necessary to express the artistic act, which also serves as their means of income.

References:

Appadurai, Arjun (1990): Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. In: Theory, Culture & Society. 7:2-3, 295-310

Buchholz, Larissa (2022): The Global Rules of Art. The emergence and divisions of a cultural world economy. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Trapp, Franziska (2020): Lektüren des zeitgenössischen Zirkus. Ein Modell zur text-kontext-orientierten Aufführungsanalyse. 1. Auflage. Berlin: De Gruyter