(Re)Imagining Boundaries: Evocative Autoethnography Through Musical Performance as Artful Inquiry

Abstract

In this paper, I engage in evocative autoethnography that enacts musical performance as a form of artful inquiry, situated within a decolonizing methodological orientation. Drawing on three staged performances, I position music as a practice that thinks with and through boundaries shaped by socio-cultural, historical, and political forces. Grounded in self-reflexivity, this autoethnographic work (re)imagines boundaries not as fixed divisions but as relational spaces for meaning-making. Through embodied musical encounters, I examine how ethnic emotion of Han can be relationally shared, and at times productively left untranslated, across differences. I ultimately posit that music, as embodied practice, holds the potential to affect our ways of living, being, becoming, and coexisting as researchers, music educators, and members of a shared world.