daily in diverse local media, for example, a local community magazine of 3,000 copies was made, and at community centres people were informed about what was really happening there. Collective cleaning was also undertaken using local materials and methods of containing the spillage that were more sustainable for the estuary. Some time later, protest actions were held with reedcutters(junqueros) outside the Shell building in Buenos Aires and a map was made explaining the impact of the spillage, its critical points, conflicts and direct long-term consequences by means of drawings and texts in the manner of a comic linking with a map of the affected area. This representation was a visual summary of the data from the first participative report on the monitoring of the area, with the aim of making the impact of the spillage on their lives more easily understandable and apparent to the local population. Using these weapons a challenge was made to institutional authority and the “techno-political” way of thinking of government and corporate agencies. New forms of collective action and creativity were mobilized that confronted singleminded thinking to describe reality, resulting in productive diffusion and a variety of networks. Links, networks and dissemination In the years that followed, the situation of the spillage and the work conducted moved outside the area of direct impact with the celebration of public debates, local and international exhibitions, an investigation in Holland into the double standards of large corporations, as well as presentations at OECD WATCH, FOE Netherlands, IRENE and EED that informed civilian society in the North of the abuses committed by their businesses in countries in the South. In 2002, together with Friends of the Earth International, Refinery Reform Campaign, GroundWork South Africa, South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, South African exchange Program on Environmental Justice, Global Community Monitor and FreeTibet campaign, Ala Plástica drew up the document Failing the Challenge, The Other Shell Report 2002, that was presented at the Shell Annual Shareholders Meeting in London. During this period, a communication strategy was developed with the community affected by the disaster. Thirty-two solar panels obtained by rather unorthodox means were installed on the access channel to the Petrochemical Port of La Plata. That same year, the Supreme Court of Justice ordered Royal Dutch/Shell to invest 35 million dollars in repairing the damage done to the ecosystem, which made the case the most important of its kind in Latin America. At present, Derrame participates in the SIG/Rhizome-Construction Initiative together with organizations from Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina, in the Central Valley Initiative and the Paraguay-
Paraná Wetlands System, and also in a “Mapping of Sustainability and Territorial Integration of the River Plate Basin” based on the use of Geographical Information Systems. The documents produced are incorporated into a number of actions and international exhibitions. References and learning “El Albardón” experimental nursery (reed producer), reed cutters (junqueros) and inhabitants of Magdalena, Marcelo Miranda and Matilde Zúcaro, Projects Environment (Manchester [now Littoral]), Nuncia Tur (Botanical Department of the Natural Science Museum at the UNLP), International Union for Conservation of Nature, Rubén Verón (Producers Cooperative of the River Plate coast) and Jorge D. Williams (President of the Specialist Group on South American Reptiles and Amphibians). Challenges and difficulties There are large differences in the area of the River Plate Basin, especially regarding availability of resources, which is high for those adopting the viewpoint of integration and globalisation, but low for those adopting the viewpoint of the territorial integration of communities. In a certain sense, Derrame is an exceptional testimony suggesting the capacity of alternative attitudes to alleviate global catastrophe and the importance of local knowledge for understanding territory as a collective construction. Ala Plástica will attempt to reassess and strengthen specific actions of resistance and transformation as against the fragmentation of life, carrying out permanent monitoring of what was set up by Derrame, keeping contact with the actors that are part of the subject, and collecting and processing new information, which in some cases includes art spaces and circuits.
-------------------------------------------atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) -------------------------------------------Eco-Urban Network/ECObox Paris, La Chapelle, 2001-ongoing www.urbantactics.org
Eco-Urban Network/ECObox Eco-Urban Network (i.e. ECObox) is a series of selfmanaged projects in the La Chapelle area of northern Paris which encourages residents to gain access to and critically transform temporary misused or underused spaces under the coordination of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa). These projects, initiated in 2001, value a flexible and reversible use of space and aim to preserve urban ‘biodiversity’ by encouraging the co-existence of a wide range of life-styles and living practices. aaa began this process by establishing a temporary
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