Emergent Rhizomes: Posthumanist Environmental Ethics in the Participatory Art of Ala Plástica

Abstract

Emergent Rhizomes:Posthumanist Environmental Ethics in the Participatory Art of Ala Plástica Vera Coleman A critical discussion of the artistic production of Ala Plástica, an internationally-recognized collaboration between Argentine artists and environmental activists Alejandro Meitin and Silvina Babich, demands the reconceptualization of the complex relationships between nature and culture, the material and the discursive, and human corporality and the environment. Ala Plástica’s interventions reveal that these categories are not ontologically distinct but rather co-constitutive and mutually implicated in the same emergent phenomena; the cultural is immanent in the material and vice versa. Specifically oriented toward threatened riparian ecosystems and their human communities, Ala Plástica’s initiatives respond to agendas formulated by local groups whose sustainable economies, public infrastructure and way of life are in a state of collapse due to corporate and government initiatives. These marginalized communities, which often suffer disproportionately the negative environmental and economic impact of development projects, often find their political efficacies paralyzed and their voices silenced. Rather than reproducing such vertical mechanisms of authority, Ala Plástica operates horizontally and rhizomatically, seeking to catalyze the material and political agencies of socionatural systems in processes of environmental and economic restoration while encouraging ethical interactions among human communities and the more-than-human world.1 Through works that fuse activism and artistic creation, Meitin and Babich “mobilize new forms of collective action and of creativity that challenge the unidirectional mode of perceiving reality” (Ala Plástica, “Interview”). This study examines two collaborative artistic exercises, Especies emergentes from 1995, and Ejercicio presa realized in 2001, in which Meitin and Babich activate simultaneously the creative and political agencies of local communities as well as the material agencies of coastal ecosystems situated within the Río de la Plata Estuary, one of the most biologically complex and densely populated areas of the Southern Cone. The analysis of Ala Plástica’s work demands an interdisciplinary perspective that engages scholarly material from both the humanities and the natural sciences. The contributions of contemporary art scholars Grant Kester (2006) and Malcolm Miles (2010) are particularly valuable in characterizing Especies emergentes and Ejercicio presa as works of collaborative, participatory art that merge reflexive representation with practical intervention in order to subvert authority [End Page 85] and transform reality. The theoretical orientation of the present study is rooted in posthumanism, which critiques the epistemological foundations of humanist thought and reconfigures reductionist concepts of matter, discourse, the subject, and agency that are grounded in ontological dualism. Theoretical physicist and feminist philosopher Karen Barad (2007) proposes an agential realist ontology that constitutes the principal theoretical framework of this study. According to Barad, phenomena are not exclusively social or material but rather material-discursive practices, and the concept of agency is reconfigured as the product of the dynamics of intra-activity rather than an as an attribute confined to the human sphere. This posthumanist ontology makes it possible to recognize the agency of the material world and of nonhuman others. Furthermore, through a discussion of Ala Plástica’s works, the figure of the rhizome emerges as a polyvalent metaphor for the artists’ methodology, for the interconnectedness of socionatural systems and for materiality itself. The two members that form the core of Ala Plástica, a not-for-profit NGO based in La Plata, Argentina, exemplify the interdisciplinary partnerships that often form in the interest of environmentally-inflected cultural production and activism. Silvina Babich is a professionally-trained artist skilled in the fiber arts. While Alejandro Meitin’s background is in law, he is also a member of Red de Arte Litoral (a network of artists and scholars who promote innovation in artistic practice and theory) and of the editorial board of the online arts and culture journal Latin Art. Both artists are active pedagogically and have given workshops, courses and lectures in various countries in Latin America, North America and Europe (“Participantes” 2). In collaboration, Babich and Meitin have successfully carried out more than thirty artistic and ecological interventions ranging from community environmental restoration projects to collaborative sculptures and emergent performances in over five countries since forming Ala Plástica in 1991 (Ala Plástica, Catálogo 1). The group...