Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This talk will explore the ambiguity of surfaces as they preserve and disrupt life on Christmas Island. It will explore how animals engage petrochemical surfaces, specifically plastics and asphalt. These surfaces can provide infrastructures of care, whilst simultaneously enacting everyday violence.

Paper long abstract

A large portion of the Earth is now covered with artificial, petrochemical-derived surfaces. Asphalt carries people at speed from place to place, while plastic materials afford new possibilities including in the manufacturing of these vehicles. During the rainy season on Christmas Island, an Australian external territory, the red crab migration sees hundreds of millions of endemic red crabs move across the island to mate and lay their eggs. Adept at climbing improbable rock faces and negotiating demanding surfaces, the crabs meet difficulties when traversing asphalt. Crabs are frequently crushed under the semi-synthetic wheels of passing cars and, if trapped on the road as the sun comes out, they can bake in their own carapace. To limit crab fatalities during the migration, slippery vertical surfaces have been introduced to channel the crabs away from the roads and to stop them from entering buildings wherein they often die. As plastic tyres crush crabs they also abrade on the roads, spreading novel pollutants into nearby ecologies. Looking at how people on Christmas Island create, negotiate, and alter surfaces during the crab migration this talk will explore artificial surfaces as both a near ubiquitous form of everyday violence and a means of enacting care.