This explores jellyfish fights, swimming lessons, meditations and social meanings of jellyfish in Perth's riverscape.
Image: “If you wish...” © Gina Pickering
This project investigates the emotional and social presence, references and experiences with Jellyfish in the Swan and Canning Rivers: their arrival in the Swan River, oral history references evidenced in a recent social audit for the Interpretation Plan for the Swan and Canning Rivers, practices with jellyfish (particularly throwing, eating and even singing); their presence in Freycinet diaries and what they mean to the Noongar people as well as notions of jellyfish as a colonial metaphor. Jellyfish are rhythmic, hypnotic, aesthetic inhabitants of the Swan and Canning Rivers. They bring to life a metaphor of movement--‘you can go in your own direction as long as you move with the tide’. In energy medicine, jellyfish are about flow and elegance, in contrast to being rigid, immobilised or simply all washed up.
This short movie including text, footage, quotes and interviews about jellyfish and their meanings to the Perth community and their roles as natural and cultural indicators will be a research outcome.
