Conversational Confluences, to be held in Ouro Preto, Brazil, from August 3–7, 2026.
Founded in 1964, the ASC has long been a home for those exploring cybernetics as conversation — a way of understanding systems, relations, and acts of participation in the world. Each ASC conference offers a space for shared inquiry and experimentation, where participants co-create formats for learning, reflection, and doing together.
For ASC 2026, we turn our attention to the notion of confluence: how distinct perspectives can come together without losing their difference, generating new ways of thinking and acting. We invite proposals for tracks that cultivate such encounters — spaces where ideas, practices, and disciplines meet, merge, and transform.
Conversational Confluences
Confluence, as articulated by Brazilian thinker and activist Nego Bispo, provides a framework for reflecting on how diverse worldviews, practices, and epistemologies can coexist without losing their distinct identities. Rather than assimilation or homogenization, confluence is about mutual amplification, where differences are not obstacles but sources of strength. Like rivers merging to become stronger, this coming together creates new, more resilient possibilities of coexistence. Rooted in decolonial and counter-hegemonic struggles, the concept invites us to imagine collaborations that foster plurality and the emergence of new systems of living and knowing.
Building on this understanding, the ASC 2026 meeting seeks to explore how cybernetics can participate in such confluences — through encounters and experiments that bring it into dialogue with art, science design, technology, ecology, and situated knowledge.
Conference Structure
Dates: August 3–7, 2026
Location: Ouro Preto, Brazil
Languages: English and Portuguese (simultaneous translation may be available, but is not guaranteed for every session)
The five-day event will be structured as follows:
Afternoons (Days 1–4): parallel track sessions designed and facilitated by proposers.
Mornings: shared sessions for all participants — extended breakfasts, thematic dialogues, and collective reflections — where ideas and experiences from the tracks can mingle and resonate.
Day 5: collective synthesis and future-oriented conversations.
Track proponents will be invited to share insights and reflections from their sessions in these morning gatherings, fostering coherence and conversation across the confluence.
More details to follow soon….