Landspersky
investigating the Intersection of Language, Art, and Social Justice
René
My work is driven by the belief that transformation occurs by critically examining the systems shaping language, culture, and identity. For over a decade, I've created spaces at the intersection of art and critical inquiry, confronting and dismantling colonial structures that perpetuate inequality and exclusion.
While decolonization is often discussed, a crucial blind spot persists: identities shaped by colonialism remain entrenched through nationalist narratives. My practice addresses this legacy by challenging the idea of identity as fixed or natural. Rather than erasing identity, I expose its historical formation and destabilize its normative power, opening pathways toward relational, context-aware understandings of belonging.
Welcome! This is René Landspersky writing...
About
My artistic vision rejects universal claims, embracing instead pluriversality—an ethos of epistemic diversity, relationality, and coexistence among multiple ways of knowing and being. My practice challenges Eurocentric narratives, creating space for historically marginalized voices.
Art, for me, is dialogue: a meeting place of cultural, linguistic, and political traditions without hierarchy. I position my work within broader movements dismantling dominant knowledge structures—through collective practice, deep listening, and transformative co-creation.
Future Literacies:
Critical Thinking and Empathy
I reject the university as the singular authority on knowledge, embracing instead the pluriversity—where knowledge is collaboratively shaped, contested, and relational. My artistic practice is insurgent: a method of resistance, healing, and radical imagination.
Central to my work is unsettling entrenched power structures that define our cultural and cognitive maps. I treat language and art as arenas of struggle, historically weaponized to marginalize difference and uphold empire. Decolonizing these spaces dismantles hierarchies privileging certain knowledges, languages, and aesthetics.
Art, therefore, is not neutral—it transforms. It enables us to unlearn, disrupt, and reimagine. My practice fosters spaces—discursive, embodied, and affective—that confront colonial residues in language, expose dominant narratives, and nurture futures built on solidarity, justice, and epistemic diversity.
solidarity, justice, and epistemic multiplicity.
Transformational Foresight:
I believe in the power of co-creation. My work involves active engagement with communities to imagine and shape a future where all languages, identity positionings, and cultural expressions are valued equally.
Crossing Thresholds: Artistic Interventions in the Coloniality of Knowledge
Language is political—never neutral. It shapes power dynamics, defines who gets heard, and determines whose knowledge counts. In my work, I treat language not just as a tool of communication but as a site of struggle, where domination can be reinforced or actively undone. Through translanguaging, I cultivate spaces that resist linguistic hierarchies and embrace the full range of how people speak, live, and relate.
My art challenges colonial narratives and brings underrepresented voices to the forefront. I use my creative energy to question, provoke, and inspire dialogue around issues of language, race, and cultural justice.
What I Do
Co-Creation
anti-colonial work
Lifelong Learning
Activities
not an endpoint; it is a process.
René Wilhelm Landspersky
Art enables me and you to attend otherwise ...
The Futures are Now !
Dominant (often Global North-driven) views of language and identity-positioning remain trapped in static, dichotomous frameworks, confining languages to fixed containers—brains, classrooms, dictionaries, or nation-states—and mapping it onto clearly bounded entities. Such frameworks sustain illusions of coherence via discourses of sameness and difference, reinforcing a subtle yet hegemonic monocentric norm that Others linguistic plurality. Transformational foresight challenges these entrenched assumptions, revealing their historical contingency and reimagining language as a fluid, relational space that fosters inclusive, pluralistic futures.
My Blog
Unpacking Language, Power, and Belonging: Reflections from René Landspersky
René Landspersky’s blog explores the intersection of language, identity, and social justice from a decolonial perspective. Here, Landspersky delves into the nuanced relationship between language and power, sharing insights on cultural resilience, identity, and the decolonization of knowledge. Through essays, reflections, and critical thought pieces, he invites readers to challenge societal norms and explore alternative ways of understanding belonging, resistance, and cultural identity.
Moving Beyond Monolithic Perspectives to Embrace Diverse Worldviews
Knowledge & Epistemology
Learning to Listen: How Decolonial Thinking Reshapes Our Understanding of Knowledge
Exploring How Linguistic Hierarchies Influence Our Sense of Belonging and Exclusion
Language & Identity
The Silent Power of Words: How Language Shapes Social Boundaries
The Importance of Challenging Dominant Historical Narratives
Cultural Heritage & Decolonial Theory
Decolonizing Memory: Whose Stories Do We Preserve?
