July 26–30, 2027
Departmental Institute of Fine Arts · Cali, Colombia
Promote an international meeting space between semiotics and related sciences to debate the contemporary transformations of territories as cultural, ecological, social, technological and political configurations of meaning.
SEMIOTIC TERRITORIESWAYS OF KNOWING AND PATHS IN CREATION
WE WELCOME YOU WITH THE HEART, THERE WHERE EVERY CREATION OF MEANING BEGINS
Territories are not merely geographical places or borders drawn on a map. They are material extensions traversed and marked by beings in motion, practices, memories, and rituals. They are the result of complex relationships between biophysical and/or technological environments and power dynamics, as well as networks of cooperative and/or conflictual relationships that contribute to giving them meaning in a constant process of becoming.
The territory is thus, by definition, a metamorphic space-time, which expands or contracts, as a process immersed in continuous resignification. Differences in scale and point of view, internal and external, show that each of its components is affected by occupations or conflicts, or by emotional ties and shared gestures, and that these acts alter the global evolution in a different way. The coexistence between heterogeneous entities manifests the fundamental plurality of cultures and natures.
What models of society do the territories offer us? Territorial topologies reflect contrasting collective identities, ranging from rigid hierarchies to acentric and rhizomatic networks, although more often asymmetrical. Thus, spatial relations between individuals are organized around legitimate authorities, who speak on behalf of others: villagers, ancestors, the river, the mountain, as well as emerging technologies. However, in acentric territories the roles of the entities that compose them can only be local, temporary and reversible. In digital AI spaces, current interactions seem to boil down to helpful, mutually courteous exchanges and services. However, within algorithms and machine learning, certain latent “authorities” influence the fairness and neutrality of machine-generated results. Correctness prevails, but it often serves as a cover for unacceptable stereotypes and discrimination. These virtual territories have profound axiological, social, political and environmental repercussions.
We live in a time of contradictions between humanitarian, ecological, and political crises and a growing sensitivity toward other kinds of beings, all of whom have the same right to coexist on this planet. A mediating discipline such as semiotics, concerned with signification, cannot remain indifferent to these ongoing changes. The 17th IASS World Congress brings together semioticians and scholars from related sciences in Cali, Colombia, to investigate, through various methods, empirical and epistemic approaches, and heuristic aims, the signs of the value that beings assign to their environments and to the other beings that inhabit them, as well as the traces of practices of care and neglect in territories.
Fortunately, neither semiotics nor other disciplines start from scratch in these cases. Indeed, local ways of knowing, as testimonies of transgenerational experiences, tell stories of the appreciation or devaluation of territories. Creative practices, in turn, explore territories of signification by rearticulating and transfiguring what already exists. They invite us to walk along less-traveled paths and listen to the voices pulsing in the air.
Local ways of knowing and creative practices translate and transform situations at different scales. In this regard, one of the challenges of our Congress is to determine the conditions and circumstances from which they can or should be transformed into political action and diplomatic strategy. Studies focused on the vulnerability, fragility, and transience of beings can prove fruitful when these qualities are understood not as defects to be corrected, but as symptoms of relationships that require rebalancing.
OBJECTIVES
Critically examine the dynamics of significance linked to environmental crises, social inequalities, mediatization processes and digital and intelligent environments, with special attention to their axiological and political implications.
Recognize and bring into dialogue local ways of knowing, cosmogonies, creative practices, and territorial experiences as legitimate forms of producing, transmitting, and transforming knowledge.
Promote the exchange of research and methodologies that contribute to the construction of practices of sustainability, care, memory, peace and intercultural coexistence in various contemporary territories.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Semiotic territories: ways of knowing and paths in creation proposes an open dialogue between theory, practice, and experience, understanding territories as dynamic spaces where memory, culture, language, and imagination converge.
CONGRESS COMMITTEES
The 2027 World Congress is possible thanks to the articulated work of its academic and organizational committees. The Scientific Committee, the Programming Committee, the Logistics Committee, the IASS-AIS Bureau and the other support teams coordinate and supervise the different processes that guarantee academic rigor, organizational excellence and the comprehensive development of the Congress.
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ORGANIZATION:
SPONSOR:
CO-ORGANIZING INSTITUTIONS
This Congress is a collective construction. Universities, research centers, academic networks and allied institutions have woven, with their commitment and collaboration, the path that brings us together today to create a global space for dialogue, research and creation in semiotics.
PARTNER INSTITUTIONS
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