Ala Plástica (La Plata, Argentina) Ala Plástica is an art and environmental NGO based in Río de la Plata, Argentina. The main concern is to link the art way of thinking with the development of projects in the social and environmental realm. Since 1991 Ala Plástica has developed a range of non-conventional artworks, focused on local and regional problems, and in close contact and collaboration with other artists, scientists and environmental groups. Ala Plástica works bio-regionally, within Argentina, as well as internationally in relationship to other transformative arts practitioners.
In 1995, with Junco/Especies Emergentes [The Reed/Emergent Species] Ala Plástica, begins to articulate various visions of the region by creating communication and cooperation platforms side by side with communities along the Estuary of the La Plata River. The study of the extraordinary propagation system of the reed, its ability to create new territories and its cleansing capacity, allowed us to activate the metaphor of rhizomatic expansion and of the emergence of a series of interconnected exercises at the Plata River estuary to explore new and creative ways of developing and applying socio-environmental profiles for the La Plata River and its coastal development. This emergent vision extended itself organically, bearing upon environmental, social and economic issues that are supported by naturalistic notions in the process of activating other human modalities of seeing, individual as well as collective. We hope a series of artistic, sensory, political, economic, and social relations and connections will follow one another, thereby generating the emergence of transformative actions or of actions that influence power. The challenge that faces our undertaking is centered, finally, around the articulation of collective forces in order to catalyze the regenerative possibilities of community action. The resistance and transformation has been timely in the face of an ongoing fragmentation of life. Presently we have gradually and naturally integrated ourselves with various organizations of the Rio de la Plata Basin with whom we share strategic interests. We found a convergence of ideas concerning the need to evaluate the procedures of the Gernmental and International Financial Institutions’ Initiative for the Integration of South America’s Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA) within the region and especially to confront it with an integrative process of diverse grassroots proposals. Headway is thus made towards a new interpretation of the Rio de la Plata Basin.
CONCEPTUALIZING -The aproach to complexity representes a dynamic property in democratic or participative processes, where action tends to transformation. -To catalize real contience shifts. -Emergent species, guides us as creative model. It gives sense to participation in processes of formation and transformation.
-Creative practices are organic models which give light on decaying states of relationship nets, and they stand as a natural process positioning in front of survival. -the question of what human being is capable to build or destroy, and what for. -the right for communities to reach more sensitive visions of their situations. -To look at how does human being function on nature. -The development of an inclusive objectivity; another way for human being to focus itself into nature. -To take reference on nature not just in the artistic/visual tradition, but in terms of behavior as artists. -Art in terms of adventure, exploration. -Closeness and empathy to nature‘s behavior. -To experience subtleness in human/nature relationship. -Why the long term? to give emergence time, to allow extended participation, to work in terms of nature‘s behavior. -Sensitive research, publicness, transformativeness, connectedness and confidence in emergence. -Cultural extintion rates are often bigger than those of certain endangered species, and the idea of rescueing cultural remainings talks about connectedness, about linking will for social survival.
THE TONE From a local social/political realm, through a critical points model, to a biosphere/political vision on the relationship between mankind and nature.
mecanisms? No, but inherent values and practices, bioregional models of action and interaction, connectedness, and selfreferenceless. Organic processes models, and reflection on them (organic formation and transformation).
ART Where is “Art”? a better question: Which are the results of art practice? A change on the way to aproach human facts and nature (an organic objectivity shift) The discrete exercise as a didactic/cathalitic experiment. Cathalisis, Attitude - Synapsis, Communication. So called Intervention art, mostly a socially diving action than an experiment. Aproaching things cathalizes the experiment/
exercise, then art interventionism emerges. Art practice out of the art establishment‘s corral (market value, facility oriented practice). Market Vs. Visibility Why the long term? For allowing sensitive aproach, extended participation, publicness, transformativeness, and confidence in emergence. Aproaching complexity makes processes of formation and transformation arise, for naturally do survival.