At a time when both the arts and academic research are increasingly opening themselves to the “Pluriverse”, understood as “a world where many worlds fit[1]”, we aim to consolidate an international, interdisciplinary, and multilingual network of young researchers and artists-researchers committed to research-creation and to pluriversal, Indigenous, decolonial, and gender studies.

The creation of this network constitutes an ecosophical, political, and sensitive commitment aimed at building forms of relationality grounded in difference, coexistence, and mutual care among human and more-than-human peoples. Inspired by the reflections of Black and Indigenous thinkers such as Antônio Bispo dos Santos, Ailton Krenak (2024), Willian Mavisoy Muchavisoy (2018), Moira Millán, Vanessa Watts (2013), Zoe Todd (2016), and non-Indigenous thinkers such as Arne Naess (2017), Félix Guattari (1989, 2013), Marisol de la Cadena, Philippe Descola, Arturo Escobar (2018, 2024), Bruno Latour, Marilyn Strathern, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Roy Wagner, the network defends the possibility of collective action rooted in diverse cosmologies capable of imagining alternative ways of living and envisioning the future in opposition to the dominant logics of the modern, colonial, and anthropocentric “One-World-World”.

Within this framework, research-creation occupies a central place (Gosselin and Lecogiec, 2009; Manning and Massumi, 2018; Martínez and Naugrette, 2020; Houdart-Merot, 2024; Plana, Garde and Pandelakis, 2024; Spatz, 2024; Corrons and Castillo Ballén, 2025). Our network understands artistic practice as a space to produce knowledge that unites aesthetic experimentation, lived experience, and critical reflection. Artistic creation and scientific research are therefore no longer conceived as separate domains, but rather as complementary processes capable of generating innovative, situated, and sensitive forms of knowledge. From this perspective, knowledge emerges from embodied and somatic experience (Shusterman, 2015), as well as from an openness to multiple forms of signification and expression. In this way, this initiative aims precisely to bridge the gap between poietics, aesthetics, action, and “ontological politics” (Escobar, 2024).

The network also responds to the urgent need to implement decolonial practices within spaces of creation, teaching, and research. For centuries, hegemonic systems of knowledge imposed monological visions of the world, limiting possibilities of perception and existence. In contrast, the Pluriverse proposes the recognition of multiple ontologies and cosmologies resisting the singular model of Western modernity. Animism, totemism, analogism, naturalism (Descola, 2005), and other systems of thought thus form a constellation of interconnected worlds, including what some authors describe as “interworlds” (Meziane, 2023), spaces of relation and transition between different forms of existence.

Finally, the project proposes to “feel-think” through the Pluriverse (Kothari, Salleh, Escobar, Demaria and Acosta, 2022 / 2023) in order to challenge the global extractivist system and rethink the ways in which we imagine time, territory, and the future. Following the reflections of Ailton Krenak (2024), the project suggests that possible futures are not only ahead of us but are also present in ancestral forms of knowledge that continue to live within the relationships between peoples and their territories. From this perspective, the consolidation of a pluriversal artistic research network becomes a space for critical and creative collaboration dedicated to imagining and building more just, diverse, and sustainable ways of inhabiting many worlds.

Members

Lead Members

• Sylvan Hecht-Aussenac, doctoral student in Research-Creation, Performing Arts Studies, Literary and Cultural Theory, Deutsches Seminar and associated to the PhD programme "Collocations", ICGSS, University of Tübingen / LLA-CRÉATIS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès / German-French Doctoral College "New Critical Theories and Decentered Epistemologies" (German-French University)
• Kristell Pech Oxte, doctoral student in Global South Studies and Maya Literature, PhD programme "Collocations: Constructing Interknowledges, Negotiating Proximities", Romanisches Seminar, ICGSS, University of Tübingen

Junior Artists-Researchers Steering Committee

• Julie Dérobert, doctoral student in Research-Creation and Visual Arts, LLA-CRÉATIS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
• Yannick Essengue, doctoral student in African Philosophy, ERRaPhiS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès / Université Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville (Congo) / German-French Doctoral College "New Critical Theories and Decentered Epistemologies"
• Carmen González, doctoral student in Literary and Cultural Theory, Deutsches Seminar, University of Tübingen
• Atiogbé Jacques Koudjodji, post-doctoral researcher in African Philosophy, ERRaPhiS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
• Valeria López Álvaro, doctoral student in Global South and Feminist Studies, PhD programme "Collocations", ICGSS, University of Tübingen
• Alaeddine Maamer, doctoral student in Research-Creation and Design, LLA-CRÉATIS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
• Juliana Marín Taborda, doctoral student in Research-Creation, Visual Arts and Philosophy, TEPHAC, University of Antioquia (Colombia) / ERRaPhiS and associated to LLA-CRÉATIS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
• Ibrahima Ndiaye, doctoral student in Global South Studies and African Literature, Romanisches Seminar, ICGSS, University of Tübingen
• Vanessa Schmitz, doctoral student in Literary and Cultural Theory and Philosophy, College of Fellows, University of Tübingen / Charles University Prague
• Yamile Villamil Rojas, doctoral student in Research-Creation and Visual Arts, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM)
• Simone Zanello, doctoral student in Cultures of the Global South and Philosophy, College of Fellows, University of Tübingen / ERRaPhiS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès / German-French Doctoral College "New Critical Theories and Decentered Epistemologies"

Other Junior Members of the Network

• Souraja Chakraborty, doctoral student in Global South Studies and Sonic Ethnography, PhD programme "Collocations", ICGSS, University of Tübingen
• Komivi Fambi, doctoral student in African and German Literatures, Deutsches Seminar, University of Tübingen / German-French Doctoral College "New Critical Theories and Decentered Epistemologies" / DAAD-Stipendiat / Université de Lomé (Togo)
• Deirdre Molloy, doctoral student in Black Studies, Ethnochoreology and Philosophy, University College Cork / ERRaPhiS, University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès
• Ronica Vungmuankim, doctoral student in Global South Studies and Legal Anthropology, PhD programme "Collocations", ICGSS, University of Tübingen

International Artistic Partner Institutions

• La Cave Poésie René Gouzenne – Lieu des littératures en scène, Toulouse (https://cave-poesie.com/)

International Artistic and Scientific Board

University of Tübingen:
Prof. Dr. Dorothee Kimmich · Prof. Dr. Dr. Russel West-Pavlov · PD Dr. Niels Weidtmann · Dr. Sara Bangert · Dr. Louis Nana

University of the Cauca:
Adolfo Albán Achinte · Abuatambayá-Tats̈ëmbuá Willian Jairo Mavisoy Muchavisoy

University of Los Andes:
Lina Álvarez Villarreal

National University of Colombia:
Alberto Castrillón Aldana · Sebastian Wiedeman

National University of Antioquia (UdeA):
Angela María Chaverra Brand · Simon Puerta Domínguez

University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès:
Matthieu Renault · Élise Van Haesebroeck · Clémence Baubant · Christophe Le Goff

University of Toulouse (formerly Paul Sabatier):
Frédéric Boone

University of Burgundy:
Hilda Inderwildi