A Guest Betwixt Margins and Memories: Navigating Diasporic Taiwanese Choreographic-Identity in Aotearoa
This artistic research investigates how the embodied experiences of displaced nostalgia across three generations, shape my choreographic practice as a Taiwanese migrant artist in Aotearoa. Positioned as a hyphen, a symbol bridging two worlds on opposite edges of the Pacific, this research foregrounds a fluid, fragmented diasporic self, adopting a provisional narrative that walks backward into the future. Grounded in familial narratives and the positionality of a guest, this thesis explores the contested terrain of Taiwanese diasporic belonging amid ongoing geopolitical tensions, colonial and nationalist pressures. Framed through the lenses of displaced nostalgia, guesting, dwelling, and parasitic identity, this research weaves theoretical engagement with Western thinkers such as Homi Bhabha, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault with frameworks emerging from the Taiwanese diasporic experience, including guesting, othering, displaced nostalgia, and parasitic guests, as well as personal and familial memories of Taiwan and its political precarity. These perspectives inform the interdisciplinary works developed throughout the research. Three positional lenses, The Hyphen, The Guest, and The Dweller, structure the research and give rise to four major creative works: Displaced Nostalgia (2021), Unlined (2021), Murmurs (2021), and This Room is an Island (2024). These works draw on diverse creative methods, including choreography, choreo-imaging, collaging, mapping, narrative writing, interactive and immersive spatial design, and participatory processes, to translate memory, identity, and histories into embodied dialogues shared with collaborators and audiences in Tāmaki Makaurau. Practices of guesting, dwelling, and choreographic re-membering operate as both conceptual and methodological strategies, exploring the simultaneous possibilities of belonging and not-belonging in a hyphenated world. This thesis situates memory as politically and provisionally fluid. It examines intergenerational displacement, colonial and nationalist legacies, and contemporary geopolitical threats from a Taiwanese diasporic perspective. By synthesizing artistic practice, theoretical frameworks, and embodied experience, this research contributes to dance studies and arts-based scholarship, proposing new ways of understanding diasporic belonging, the creative potential of displaced nostalgia, and the politics of Taiwanese and diasporic identities in theatre, interdisciplinary arts, and participatory practice.
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