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.