Constellations of Self: A Practice-as-Research Exploration of Embodiment, Emptiness, and First Generation Immigrant Experience

This thesis is a practice based exploration of selfhood as I have experienced it as a first-generation immigrant living in Calgary, Alberta. Rather than seeking to define the self or trace a linear account of how it develops, the project dwells in the ongoing question of what the self is and how it becomes perceptible through lived experience, embodied inquiry, and creative process. The work emerged from a discomfort with fixed ideas of identity and from my own experience of navigating multiple cultural, linguistic, and perceptual worlds as a multiethnic Indo Iranian immigrant who has lived in several countries, including Japan. These experiences revealed selfhood not as a coherent or stable entity but as something fluid, relational, and continually reconstituted. The research approaches this inquiry through performance as a mode of knowledge production. Drawing on Madhyamaka Buddhist thought, Michael Chekhov’s psycho physical actor training, culturally resonant dance forms such as Waving, Popping, Bhangra, and Azeri dance, and embodied principles from the Alexander Technique, the project investigates how movement, imagination, and sensory awareness can open alternative ways of sensing and understanding selfhood. Nervous system regulation emerged as a significant condition for accessing depth, presence, and creative responsiveness, informing both the movement practice and the broader investigation of the self. Situated within a Practice as Research framework, the thesis uses cycles of experimentation, reflection, improvisation, and remaking to generate knowledge through creative process. The creative component consists of a script and a series of performance fragments developed during studio work, and exploratory sessions. The written component contextualizes this process through philosophical inquiry, methodological explanation, and critical reflection on the discoveries, tensions, and shifts that shaped the work. Together, they propose that selfhood can be understood not as a fixed identity but as a lived question that becomes sensible through performance, relationality, and sustained inquiry.