THEMES
Poetic Waters: aesthetics, bodies and subjectivities.
This theme considers water not only as a structural element in building bodies, landscapes and imagination, but also for its transformation potential. It discusses water as a fluid and mutable medium, capable of shaping spaces and generating perceptions, feelings, affections, in several fields of knowledge.
It includes investigations on aqueous corporealities and corpographies, comprehending sweat, tears, blood, placenta and other fluids as symbolic and material expressions of existence, revealing intimate connections between the various expressions of nature, including humans. It deals with water as a material for aesthetic creation, capable of inspiring imaginary worlds, narratives and artistic expressions, from fluid corporealities to the architectures that incorporate it.
It will analyze how water, in its many forms – rivers, seas, droplets, steam – designs sensitive pathways, subverts spaces and redefines perceptions, inviting a poetic understanding of the world.
Sacred Waters: memory and celebration.
This theme immerses itself in the sacred dimensions of water, exploring its role as an element of connection between humans and other forces of nature with the divine. Water is seen as a source of life, memory and spirituality, present in rituals, beliefs, histories, legends, mythologies, spatiality, and celebrations, traditional or otherwise. It examines water as a common good an a sacred good, one which inhabits our collective imagination, from wells and reflecting pools to mists and fog, revealing itself as a mediator between the land and the transcendent. Water in its fluidity is understood as a shared resource, structuring narratives and cosmic links.
Works on the presence of water in religious traditions and symbolic systems, from initiation and purification rites to the home of gods, orishas and spirits, or as a protagonist in mythical narratives and in cosmogonies. It includes reflections on the coexistence of humans and non-humans, on water as a place to inhabit and provide shelter, and its presence in ritual and festive practices that celebrate life and death.
The theme also includes reflection on water as a way to pass on knowledge and stories, exploring its presence in constructing landscape, culture and identity, as well as its symbolic and affective dimension in creating territories.
Waters and Catastrophes: pain and destruction.
This theme deals with water in the opposite situation as its role as the source of life. It highlights water as an agent of destruction, understanding it as a cause of disaster and as an element activated through anthropic action. Water, sometimes abundant, sometimes scarce, redesigns landscapes, devastates constructs and redefines ways to inhabit.
It also encourages reflection on catastrophes that occur due to restraints imposed on water resources, when water is exceedingly exposed to exploitation and negligence, throttled by pollution, waste and predatory intervention. We know, however, that as an unruly force, these same waters are capable of reacting and reconfigure lands.
Works that explore the socioenvironmental impacts of these catastrophes, water injustice and the painful and exhaustive exploitation of this “resource” are key. The proposal includes ethical and political questioning of our shared future. Therefore it promotes the investigation of the use of water in contexts of economic exploitation and socioenvironmental inequality.
The theme includes reflection on resistance by the populations affected and their adaptation strategies, as well as critical perspectives on the relationship between bodies of water and power structures. We seek to then think of water as a battlefield, and a place for survival and reconstruction.
Hidden Waters: clashes and coexistence.
This theme sails through invisible waters, underground or hidden, that move in silence, but not with any less strength, sustain life and defy human perception. It proposes to investigate the dynamics of coexistence and conflict between humans and non-humans, where water emerges as an element of mediation and contention.
Water is dealt with as a vital resource and the main character in complex cycles, such as the “flying rivers” of the Amazon rainforest, that influence distant climates and ecosystems.
It comprehends work that discusses water in its hidden forms – aquifers, springs, steam, buffered rivers – and their role in maintaining and/or destabilizing traditional and non-traditional ways of living and biodiversity.
This proposal includes, above all, reflections on waters that become urban, on management of water resources and on the possibilities of harmonious coexistence with this element.
The theme also creates reflection on water as the home of physical living beings and of transcendental beings, cradling the living and the dead, spirits and gods, in a relationship that transcends utilitarianism and that seeks to create a vital, loving and respectful bond with this element.