Dancing With Ghosts: Memory and Melancholy in The Subversive Artist

This thesis examines how subversive artists use autonomy and memory to imagine new ways of existing beyond systemic violence. Through analysis of theory and performance studies, it highlights the efforts and risks these artists take to challenge representation and the political aspects of embodiment. The interconnected roles of language, power, and imagination are emphasized as essential to creating a more just and liberated world. Accompanying this research is a dance piece that responds to the sorrows within American society. Developed as an improvisational score, the dance becomes a process of reinvention, employing movement and imagination to seek collective solutions. The work aims to symbolize form as a space of possibility, utilizing duality, simple visual design elements, and dimensionality to reflect both accessibility and the transformative power of imagination. The body acts as a politicized space of potential, engaging with the current cultural moment to create a performance that both reflects and reimagines contemporary reality. The thesis ends with a reflection on how artmaking involves risk—an extension of life and a continuous struggle many try to avoid. Yet facing this struggle is itself a deeply shifting state. Each day provides the opportunity to create a world beyond sorrow. Every moment allows us to bring justice to darkness and find peace through love, if we choose. Freedom in art becomes possible when we focus on hope, selecting love as a steady guide, and following the path to uncover the transformative power of art.