Socioplastics is a long-term transdisciplinary framework developed by Spanish architect, artist, theorist, and curator Anto Lloveras since 2009. It redefines architecture, art, urbanism, and cultural production as metabolic, epistemic, and infrastructural systems designed for resilience in unstable, post-digital, and algorithmically volatile times. The core tagline is "Sovereign systems for unstable times", positioning the theory as a sovereign epistemic architecture that resists commodification, institutional fragmentation, algorithmic co-optation, and semantic erosion. Socioplastics operates as a post-autonomous spatial theory and metabolic mesh — a living, self-sustaining network rather than static objects or representations.
Key axioms include: Art and architecture as civic modulation — Not representation or aesthetics, but operational scripting of flows, semantic density, and institutional/urban environments. Artistic production becomes civic modulation and radical pedagogy, fostering agonistic frictions against hegemonic narratives. Metabolic sovereignty — Drawing from autopoietic theories (Maturana & Varela) and echoes of Joseph Beuys's social sculpture, it treats cultural systems as self-organizing, self-repairing entities that metabolise complexity into strategic recursion. The system rejects commodified aesthetics in favour of a "living canon" of operational closure. Hard below, supple above (vertical sovereignty) — An immutable ontological Core (hardened protocols, DOI-anchored, non-interpretive, non-circulating) provides epistemic bedrock, while fluid, adaptive Nodes (consoles, interfaces) demonstrate and calibrate in real contexts without contaminating the foundation. This asymmetry counters epistemic drift, hallucination, and contextual capture in AI-era knowledge. Systemic components — The framework builds through a hyperdense Socioplastic-Mesh (1000+ interlinked nodes by 2026, 20,000+ metadata elements), including protocols for semantic hardening, citational commitment, proteolytic transmutation, topolexical sovereignty, postdigital taxidermy, and systemic lock. Theory functions as executable logic — not abstract reflection but operative infrastructure.
Key Practices * Relational and infrastructural aesthetics — Projects like the Blue Bags series (2014–ongoing) use everyday objects (plastic bags) as neutral carriers for durational contextual translation and situational activation. Archive as sovereign territory — Integration with platforms like Are.na for decentralized, navigational infrastructure; the archive becomes a living relational repository resisting entropic decay. Urbanism as dissensus and pedagogical praxis — Urbanism is reframed as post-autonomous operational closure, negotiating aesthetic-political conditions through metabolic syntax and topological intelligence. Epistemic prosthesis for unstable times — In 2026 developments (600-MUSE Mesh United System Environment), it extends to sovereign epistemic infrastructure for AI stability, hallucination mitigation, and institutional coherence, with products like MUSE-Connector (API middleware) and MUSE-Vault (legacy firmware).
Socioplastics synthesises critical architecture, conceptual urbanism, relational art, radical pedagogy, and curatorial practice. It displaces institutional centres through sovereign gestures, establishing ontological weight via hyperdense publishing, machine-legible archives, and distributed authorship. The practice spans over 300 projects, documented across blogs (antolloveras.blogspot.com as primary hub), ORCID profile, Are.na channels, and YouTube. In essence, Socioplastics is not a traditional theory but an executable epistemic system — a sovereign, metabolic mesh that turns cultural production into resilient infrastructure for navigating volatility, algorithmic entropy, and the dissolution of boundaries between object, archive, and intelligence. Lloveras, A. (various 2026 entries) 'Socioplastics: sovereign systems for unstable times', available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com (accessed February 19, 2026). ORCID: 0009-0009-9820-3319.
