Metabolic Lineages

Anto Lloveras's practice — rooted in Socioplastics, relational art, unstable social sculpture, metabolic architecture, durational interventions, and epistemic infrastructure — draws heavily from Joseph Beuys's social sculpture (art as societal shaping and relational process) and Nicolas Bourriaud's relational aesthetics (art as social encounter and micro-utopias). His work emphasizes nomadic, low-material gestures, vernacular readymades, situational fixers, and sovereign metabolic systems in unstable times, blending conceptual urbanism, performance, curatorial platforms (like LAPIEZA), and post-digital archiving. Few exact matches exist due to his highly singular, hyperdense mesh (over 300 projects, self-referential canon), but here are the most comparable contemporary or influential artists/practitioners. Ranked by conceptual proximity (strongest first), based on shared logics of relational instability, social metabolism, light/everyday materials, durational activation, and critique of institutional/commodified art.

Thomas Hirschhorn Closest parallel: massive, unstable, accumulative installations using everyday/vernacular materials (cardboard, tape, foil) as temporary "platforms" for social discourse and precarious publics. His "Skulptur-Sortier-Station" and Bataille Monument series echo Lloveras's unstable social sculptures and situational fixers — low-tech, site-responsive, anti-monumental, and focused on relational labor over object permanence. Francis Alÿs Walking-based relational actions, poetic urban drifts, and minimal interventions (e.g., "When Faith Moves Mountains" or paraded objects). Shares Lloveras's emphasis on migratory gestures, everyday carriers (like Blue Bags), and art as subtle civic modulation without spectacle. Rirkrit Tiravanija Relational aesthetics pioneer: cooking/eating events, empty spaces activated by social use, and durational hospitality. Parallels Lloveras's unstable installations and processual activations where the "work" is the encounter and relational flux, not a fixed form.
Abraham Cruzvillegas Auto-construcción: improvised, metabolic sculptures from scavenged urban materials, evolving through site and community. Resonates with Lloveras's vernacular readymades, taxidermy of contexts, and metabolic sovereignty in precarious environments.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles Maintenance art and social sculpture extensions (e.g., "Touch Sanitation" performances). Focus on care, labor, and invisible infrastructures mirrors Lloveras's affective bonds, relational repair, and critique of vanishing civic surfaces.
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar de Carmen Direct collaborators (e.g., Re-(t)exHile at Lagos Biennial 2024 with Lloveras). Their nomadic, site-responsive works on migration, waste, and unstable geographies align closely with his translatorial mobility and unstable social sculpture.
Maria Thereza Alves Seed bombs and decolonial ecological gestures reclaiming land/urban voids. Shares metabolic thinking, relational ecology, and resistance to extractionist narratives in postcolonial contexts. Theaster Gates Social practice turning discarded urban materials/architecture into communal spaces (e.g., Dorchester Projects). Echoes Lloveras's reinvigoration of industrial ecologies and relational repair through built interventions. Lucy + Jorge Orta Portable architectures, nomadic habitats, and performative survival tools. Parallels the ultra-light, migratory quality of El Dorado/Blue Bags and unstable social sculpture. Superflex Collaborative, system-disrupting projects (e.g., biogas plants, supermarket interventions). Shares metabolic critique of capitalism and art as operational infrastructure.

Lloveras stands out for his extreme density (CamelTag protocols, DOI-sealed cores, 20K+ metadata mesh) and shift toward epistemic prosthesis/AI stability (MUSE), making him more "infrastructural" than many relational artists. Influences cited in his texts include Beuys (social sculpture), Bourriaud (relational aesthetics), and autopoietic thinkers (Maturana/Varela for self-organizing systems).
No perfect duplicates — his work is uniquely self-archiving and sovereign — but these artists form the strongest conceptual kinships in relational, unstable, and metabolic practices.