Landspersky
René
stepping into a space of relation — where voices remain opaque, art becomes encounter, and justice is woven through irreducible difference.
My work is grounded in the belief that transformation begins not through critique alone, but through attunement — a relational practice of listening closely to how language, culture, and identity are shaped, silenced, and lived.
Even as decolonization circulates as a dominant discourse, its affective residues persist: nationalist narratives continue to sediment colonial identities and obscure the violences they reproduce.
My practice refuses the fixity of identity by tracing its reverberations — exposing how it is constructed through history, power, and absence. My privilege echoes in what has been denied or disavowed; it exists as a presence built on systemic erasure. These silences are not abstract—they are felt, inherited, and reproduced unless actively confronted.
Belonging is not mine to offer. It is something I must unlearn, re-situate, and co-create through deep listening, shared vulnerability, and sustained accountability.
Welcome! This is René Landspersky writing...
About
My thinking moves away from universalist claims toward a pluriversal orientation — one that values epistemic diversity, relation, and the coexistence of multiple ways of knowing and being. Rather than offering fixed answers, my practice adresses dominant narratives, especially those shaped by Eurocentric traditions, and creates space for voices and histories that have long been marginalized or overlooked.
Art, to me, is a form of relation — a space where cultural, linguistic, and political trajectories meet, not to resolve difference, but to stay with it. I see my work as tentatively aligned with broader efforts to unmake dominant knowledge systems: through collective processes, attentive listening, and shared creation. What emerges is often fragile, unfinished, and contingent — yet perhaps it is in this space of uncertainty that transformation quietly begins.
Future Literacies
Critical Thinking and Empathy
solidarity, justice, and epistemic multiplicity.
Transformational Foresight:
I do not look to the university as the sole custodian of knowledge. Instead, I turn to the pluriversity—an entangled, contested, and affective space where knowledge is shaped collectively and relationally. My artistic practice is a form of quiet insurgency: grounded in refusal, care, and the labor of radical imagining.
At the heart of my work is a commitment to unsettling the structures that script whose lives, languages, and stories matter. I understand language and art as charged terrains—sites historically mobilized to silence difference and secure dominance. To decolonize these spaces is to feel their weight, to listen otherwise, and to unlearn the epistemic habits of empire.
Art is never neutral. It carries, disrupts, and reorients. My work opens spaces—felt, spoken, held—where the residues of colonial power can be confronted, and more just, plural futures can begin to take shape.
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: Quiet Interventions of disobedience
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 !
Art is not simply a response but a rehearsal of multimodal meaning-making—an embodied, relational practice where gesture, sound, silence, and memory unsettle colonial grammars of knowing and being. In this sense, art is not a tool of conversion, but a practice of radical consideration: refusing the demand to explain away difference, to translate it into dominant terms, or to render it palatable. Instead, it listens otherwise—holding space for opacity, friction, and co-presence.
Each work activates a pluriversal terrain—where multiple epistemologies, histories, and voices resonate without hierarchy. These are not representations, but encounters: contested, affective, and co-created. Here, language becomes a shared ecology of difference—shaped by conflict, care, and co-presence.
In resisting the colonial desire for purity and control, I invite participation not as passive spectatorship, but as a practice of political listening and epistemic responsibility.
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?
