The Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, under the auspices of the Bled Strategic Forum, is organizing the 6th International Conference on Latin America and the Caribbean Days in Ljubljana, taking place from November 20-21, 2024.

You are cordially invited to join them on Thursday, November 21, 2024, at 3:00 PM in the Alma Karlin Hall of Cankarjev dom for the conference's main event, a high-level panel titled "The Role of Latin America and the Caribbean in the New Geopolitical Reality."

The event will feature distinguished guests from Slovenia and countries of the region, who will discuss the evolving role and key political, economic, and social challenges facing Latin America and the Caribbean in the rapidly changing global geopolitical landscape, as well as new opportunities to strengthen bilateral and multilateral political, economic, scientific, and cultural ties.

Participation in the event, which will be conducted in English, is possible with a free registration HERE.

Pax Cultura - Peace through culture is the slogan of the peace movement that should bring peace to all nations and destroy the very possibility of war through culture. The true concept of culture must be explained again and again and implanted in human consciousness, so that humanity begins to experience it as something sacred, so that humanity never sins against cultural values and, at the same time, against the very creator and bearer of these values - the living human being. The consciousness of the world should be gained with culture, beauty and knowledge should conquer, and all-encompassing and all-understanding spirituality should win. Where there is culture, there is also peace. There is also an achievement and a real solution to the most difficult social problems. Culture is the accumulation of the highest goodness, the highest beauty, the highest knowledge.

The purpose of the event is to spread the best of ancient and modern thought in the fields of art, science and spirit, and their common beauty forms that great concept of culture that points to the salvation of all mankind. We sincerely wish that the light from the rainbow of these achievements should inspire all hearts, all nations and all religions, in brotherhood, towards peaceful development.

India is a country of high culture, with spiritually cultivated inhabitants and accumulated knowledge that has never been lost since ancient times. Many people have experienced the magnetism of India. The secret of its great appeal lies above all in the continuity of its cultural tradition. There is no country in the world where centuries-old cultural traditions have been preserved as in India. Fate and the gods wanted to be at least one country on the planet that would be able to clearly and convincingly demonstrate the evolutionary essence of culture and beauty.

PROGRAM

Friday, 22 November 2024
17:00 – 18:30
Lecture: Understanding and Appreciating Indian Classical Music and Rhythm
Rohan Dasgupta, sitar maestro & Pandit Udai Mazumdar, tabla maestro
Break: 30 minutes
19:00 – 20:30
Concert of Traditional Indian Classical Music
Rohan Dasgupta: sitar & Pandit Udai Mazumdar: tabla

Saturday, 23 November 2024
17:00 – 18:45
Lecture: The Multi-layered Messages of Indian Myths
Biljana Dušić, MD
Break: 15 minutes
19:00 – 20:30
Theatrical Performance: The Play of the Middle (Madhyamavyāyoga)
An early classical Sanskrit one-act play (3rd century CE) by the renowned Sanskrit playwright Bhāsa
Translation and direction: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Luka Repanšek, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Performed by: Ancient Indian Theatre Group, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
Musical accompaniment: Rohan Dasgupta, sitar maestro

The performance will be conducted according to the principles of ancient Indian theatre and will be in Sanskrit with Slovenian and English subtitles.

Czech writer Petra Hůlová won the hearts of readers already with her debut novel, All This Belongs to Me (Paměť mojí babičce, 2002), which won the prestigious Magnesia Litera Award for Discovery of the Year in the Czech Republic and was named Best Novel of the Year by the Czech daily Lidové noviny. All her subsequent works testify to Hůlová’s masterful storytelling – skilfully interlacing the personal stories of her characters with broader social and cultural issues. 

She defines her writings as "3G": always working with the topics of gender, generations, and geography. Hůlová’s works that have been translated into Slovenian include the novels Tajga Station (Stanice Tajga, Cankarjeva založba, 2016), in which she juxtaposes the European spirit against Siberian culture, and A Brief History of The Movement (Stručné dějiny Hnutí, Cankarjeva založba, 2020), a dystopic account of feminist dictatorship whose victims are not only men. 

Hůlová holds a degree in Culturology from Prague's Charles University. She lived in Mongolia for a year as an exchange student after having studied the language and culture for several years. She was a Fulbright scholar in the US at New York University’s Department of Anthropology.

The event will be held in English with Slovenian translation. 
 

An Embodied Faith: A Christian Critique of Digitality, Prof. Noreen Herzfeld, PhD, St. John’s University, College of St. Benedict (USA) and ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies)
Of all major religions, Christianity places the strongest focus on the incarnation of God in Jesus, his bodily resurrection and his real presence in the Eucharist. 
The digital revolution has revived the issues raised as early as in the Early Christianity about the goodness of the material world, the transcendence of God and the human capacity to transcend our material bodies.

Dreams, Archetypes and Artificial Intelligence, Assist. Prof. Maja Gutman Mušič, PhD, ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies) and ISH Alma Mater Europaea
Carl Gustav Jung believed that the archetypes are of significant importance in the interpretation of dreams. Today, utilizing the linguistic tools of artificial intelligence, Jung's thesis can be empirically proven. The paper focuses on the digital project “2020 Dreams: Toward a New Understanding of the Dreaming-Waking Continuum” published last year by Stanford University Press, and a Fulbright Project aimed at identifying and analysing archetypal states in dreams based on the Sleep and Dream Database.

Within the framework of the national research programme Constructive Theology in the Age of Digital Culture and the Anthropocene, ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies) and the Association for Comparative Religious Studies.

Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots and Identity, Prof. Vojko Strahovnik, PhD, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Theology
The paper addresses the issue of interaction between humans and artificial intelligence systems, in particular the AI programs called Large Language Models (LLM), which form the basis for chatbots. The various issues surrounding this interaction will be addressed mainly from the perspective of identity. A main issue to examine is how identity is perceived and (trans)formed in the interaction between humans and AI.

The End of Books and the Challenges of Religious Thinking in the Age of Textuality, Assist. Prof. Luka Trebežnik, PhD, ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies) and ISH Alma Mater Europaea
The lecture addresses the question of how the end of books, especially as the end of a certain way of reading and approaching the truth, affects religions, especially Western religions intrinsically structured as religions of books/Scriptures. The age of digital textuality confronts us with hermeneutical challenges that are in many ways diametrically opposed to the old religious ways of interpreting the world. Can religions based on the idea of “in the beginning was the Word” transcend the age of books and fully affirm the age of textuality?  
 

Within the framework of the national research programme Constructive Theology in the Age of Digital Culture and the Anthropocene, ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies) and the Association for Comparative Religious Studies.

Religious Communities in the Virtual Age Prof. Aleš Črnič, PhD, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled many religious communities to establish new, more intense attitudes towards technologies and the digital worlds. The paper presents a concise overview of the concept and main findings of CHANSE-Recovira, an international research project that examines how the shape, role, and experience of religious life in Europe has been transformed by contemporary technology and digital culture.

Digital Eco Spirituality? Phenomenology and Ethics of Experiencing "Nature" in Virtual Reality, Assist. Prof. Gorazd Andrejč, PhD, University of Groningen, Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society and ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies)
In recent years, the practice of immersing people in the visual and auditory worlds of different "natural" environments through virtual reality has been expanding dramatically. Part of this cultural phenomenon is the concept of digital eco spirituality: cultivating a deeper sense of connection with the earth and all living beings, and connecting with the Divine by immersing ourselves in the virtual natural world.


Within the framework of the national research programme Constructive Theology in the Age of Digital Culture and the Anthropocene, ZRS Koper (Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies) and the Association for Comparative Religious Studies.

Irena Cerar has authored a number of books, among which perhaps the most widely popular are the fairy-tale Slovenia travel guides aimed at families, as well as travellers young and old. The talk will also focus on her nature writing, in particular her two books Potepuški okruški: kako sem hodila po robu (Buča 2021) and Svetišča narave: sedem tednov vseživosti (UMco 2024).
 

Anunciada Fernández de Córdova is a Spanish writer and diplomat who has devoted part of her career to ambassadorial duties in Slovenia. Two of her books, the travelogue Letijo dnevi (Cankarjeva založba 2011) and the poetry collection Prodiranja (Študentska založba 2011), have been published in Slovenian, and her poetry, Estaciones en Ljubljana, has been published as a dual-language book (2015).
 

Originally from Radovljica, Alenka Vreček moved to the US several decades ago to teach skiing and start a family. Diagnosed with a serious illness, she has lent a new sense of purpose to her life through a cycling tour from Lake Tahoe, her home, to her second home on the north-west coast of Mexico. An account of this journey, titled She Rides, came out in the US in 2023, and was published in Slovenian (translator Lili Potpara) in spring 2024 under the working title Naj se vrti. 

Nataša Kramberger lives in Berlin and Jurovski dol, writes novels and columns, and owns a farm. The talk will focus on her book on Berlin, Brez zidu (Cankarjeva založba 2014), in which she also writes about other places, particularly addressing the changes that this astonishing city has undergone in recent decades.