Abstract This presentation examines how embodied artistic strategies function as methodologies for engaging with conflict, positioning artistic practice as epistemic inquiry and civic action. Building on my research into how dance and performance artists materialize conflict narratives and reimagine social fragmentation, I propose that conflict is not only something to be resolved but something that can be experienced, interpreted, and transformed through embodied awareness.

At the center of the presentation is my practice-based project, Non-Verbal Scores: Reimagining Gestural Vocabularies for Mediators, which investigates gesture as an autonomous yet relational mode of meaning-making within mediation contexts. The presentation is situated within the conference theme Exploring the Ineffable, and specifically addresses dance, movement, and gesture as minoritized or endangered embodied knowledges. Based on analysis and reenactment of recorded mediation sessions, I separated gestures from speech units and realigned them through artistic interpretation. The work reveals how nonverbal expression can reshape communicative dynamics, empathy, and perception in conflict encounters.

Combining artistic experimentation with research-driven inquiry, the presentation demonstrates that embodied knowledge is not illustrative of theory but generative of it. The presentation invites the audience to consider artistic methods as forms of knowledge production and as practical tools for those working with conflict, mediation, and collective processes. The presentation argues that embodied artistic strategies offer a distinct methodological contribution to conflict studies by foregrounding gesture as a site of knowledge, relation, and transformation beyond verbal discourse. This project contributes a transferable artistic methodology for examining nonverbal communication in conflict contexts, demonstrating how choreographic thinking can inform mediation practice.