Jovan Wolfe in Autonets hoodie designed by micha cárdenas and Ben Klunker
Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is an artivist project focused on creating networks of communication to increase community autonomy and reduce violence against women, LGBTQI people, people of color and other groups who continue to survive violence on a daily basis. The networks are both online and offline, including handmade wearable electronic fashion and face to face agreements between people. Autonets considers how movement is a technology and how dance and performance can be used to develop networks for community based responses to violence. The project was started by micha cárdenas but expanded into an ecology of artists, hackers and activists. Autonets includes a line of mesh networked electronic clothing with the goal of building autonomous local networks that don’t rely on corporate infrastructure to function, inspired by community based, anti-racist, prison abolitionist responses to gendered violence. The Autonets garments are prototype that use mesh networking to alert everyone in range who is wearing another Autonet garment that someone needs help and will indicate that person’s proximity. Autonets workshops and performances have included trans and gender non-conforming people of color in LA, artists and students in São Paulo, sex workers in Toronto and queer youth of color in Detroit.
Autonets: We Already Know and We Don’t Yet Know, Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics VIII Encuentro, São Paulo, Brazil, January 2013, with Micha Cárdenas, Alessandra Renzi, Frantz Jerome, Benjamin Lundberg, Lily Mengesha, Aisha Jordan, Joana Fittipaldi and Tomaz Capobanco, photos by Macarena Gomez-Barris
Find Each Other :: Local Autonomy Networks at Zero1 Biennial in San Jose
micha cárdenas, Allison Wyper, Karen Anzoategui, Bianca Molina, Ezak Perez, Jovan Wolfe and Alison Reed, photo by Karl Baumann.
micha cárdenas in Autonets dress designed by micha cárdenas and Ben Klunker
Contents
- 1 Workshop
- 2 Performances
- 3 About the Artists
- 3.1 Autonets in Living as Form (Nomadic Version), Antioch College
- 3.2 Autonets Convergence Chicago – February 13, CAA
- 3.3 Building Our Autonomy: Autonets Convergence Toronto
- 3.4 Autonets Berlin / Lüneberg – The Safe Itinerant / The Insecurity of Mobility // Der sichere Wanderer/ Die Gefahren von Mobilität [photos]
- 3.5 Autonets Berlin / Lüneberg – The Safe Itinerant / The Insecurity of Mobility // Der sichere Wanderer/ Die Gefahren von Mobilität
- 3.6 THINK TANK today with Autonets in Berlin at Platoon Kunsthalle
- 3.7 Autonets Updates July 4, 2013
- 3.8 From a Free Software Movement to a Free Safety Movement
- 3.9 Video of Keynote at Dark Side of the Digital Autonets: Post-Digital Networks, Post-Corporate Communications
- 3.10 Workshop at Transmediale 13 – Building Local Autonomy Networks
Publications
Movements of Safety, A Safety Movement, Safety in Movement
Chapter in Plants, Androids and Operators: A Post-Media Handbook
From a Free Software Movement to a Free Safety Movement
Mute Magazine, 2013
Local Autonomy Networks: Post-Digital Networks, Post-Corporate Communications
Media-N Journal, 2013
Talks
Differential Mobilities Conference 2013 – Keynote Talk
Events
2015
March 4 – April 4, Dresden, Germany
Boom, Bubble and Blast: Art Against the Crisis
2014
November 6-9, Los Angeles
American Studies Association Annual Meeting, “Feminist Making”
August 18, Toronto
What Carries Us Through the World, OCAD
April 24, Lima, Peru
HASTAC 2014, Hemispheric Hackitivsm
January 16, Toronto
InterAccess 30th Anniversary
2013
November 13, Toronto
Autonets Convergence Toronto
August 14, Berlin/Hamburg/Lüneberg
Autonets Berlin/Lüneberg – The Safe Itinerant
July 6-August, Germany
Artist in Residence, Post Media Lab
April 19 – July 21, Amsterdam
Transcreen: Amsterdam Transgender Film Festival, art exhibition “Lost & Found Transgender Image Making”
July 2, Toronto
Autonets Workshop with Maggie’s
June 20-23, Detroit
Allied Media Conference
May 2-4, Milwaukee
Plenary, Dark Side of the Digital
May 8-13, Montreal, Quebec
Keynote, Differential Mobilities Conference
May, Detroit, Michigan
April 19, Los Angeles
Congress on Research in Dance
April 26, Lüneburg, Germany
Post Media Lab: Don’t Forget the Archives! Symposium
Feb 13-16, New York
January 11-20, São Paulo, Brazil
Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics VIII Encuentro, performance and workshop
January 29 – Feb 2, Berlin
2012
April 6, Los Angeles
Trans-Anarchism: A Night of Trans Performance, Highways Performance Space
May 9-11, Los Angeles, CA
iMapening at USC
June 8, Irvine, CA
Punk Ass Queers
June 28, Detroit, MI
Allied Media Conference Opening Ceremony
July 14, New York, NY
Hackers on Planet Earth
July 21, Los Angeles, CA
Hot and Bothered, by CUCCI LA
August 11, Riverside, CA
Ladyfest IE
September 14, San Jose
ZERO1 Biennial
November 8, San Francisco
San Francisco Transgender Film Festival
November 10-14, Montreal, QC
HTMlles Feminist New Media Festival
November 15, New York City
MIX Queer Experimental Film Festival
November 15-18, San Juan, Puerto Rico
American Studies Association Annual Meeting
November 22-24, Lüneberg, Germany
Transmediale PhD Research Conference
Background
Project Background
Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is a project focusing on creating wearable local mesh networks that don’t rely on corporate infrastructures to function.
Autonets arose out of my experience working on the Transborder Immigrant Tool and time spent in Bogotá, Colombia where I learned firsthand of the continued disappearances of people across Latin America. I imagine these having a broad range of possible uses, but the initial inspiration was to create technologies to facilitate communication to prevent gendered violence, inspired by community based, anti-racist, prison abolitionist responses to violence.
Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) includes the development of technologies including mesh networked wearable electronics to provide locative data, community building methods, theory and poetry. These technologies are being developed through workshops and collective design processes, inspired by existing networks of horizontal knowledge production in queer, transgender, survivors of gender violence and diasporic communities.
Autonets empower communities to become more autonomous through collectively agreed on networks of communication. A group of sex workers collectively organize to protect each other from violence. A group of protesters need information about where other groups of protesters are in order to take improvised collective action. A group of activists agree to know where each other are at regular times to be able to know immediately of state and paramilitary violence against their collective. A community of people of color agree to come to each other’s aid in the event of police harassment. A polyamorous group of friends want to let each other know when they are available for a date without using text messages. People finding themselves in an environmental crisis need to know how to find each other. A group of bicyclists want to flock together for a group ride. A group of women, transgender and cisgender, agree to let each other know when they are walking home and when they’ve arrived home safely. All of these communities can benefit from Autonets, remapping urban environments.
Autonets focus on building community autonomy through informal networks to create collective responses to social emergencies created by capitalism, white supremacy and neo-colonialism, inspired by the prison abolitionist movement and movements to end gender violence. As Morgan Bassichis writes in “Reclaiming Queer & Trans Safety” in The Revolution Starts at Home, “safety comes through stronger relationships, more healing , and increased support, not more prisoners or police or longer prison sentences.” As global capitalism continues to produce new forms of emergency daily, from ecological to economic disasters to mass uprisings, it is clear that people can no longer depend on corporate networks of communication. Both because of the logistical failures of top down centralization and because of their ability to be shut down by governments, such as in the case recently in Egypt as well as in San Francisco during #OpBart. Autonets will help people create local mesh networks through collective action.
The first two series of prototypes use Xbee wireless transmitters, led lights and electroluminescent (EL) wire to be able to send direction and distance information. These devices arose from discussions with collaborators including cero29 in Bogotá, Anne Balsamo and François Bar’s Mobile Technology Hacking class at the Annenberg Innovation Lab, Ada Tinnell, recent graduate in Otis College of Art and Design’s MFA Public Practice Program, andElle Mehrmand, as well as discussions with Jack Halberstam and faculty from the Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) Program.
This project has received support from the Annenberg Innovation Lab and the Media Arts and Practice Program at USC. It was presented at the UCLA Queer Studies 2011 conference, the Queerture QUEER + COUTURE Fashion Show, Highways Performance Space and Gallery and iMappening 2012.
Workshop
Building Local Autonomy Networks – How can communities build networks of communication that are not dependent on corporations? How can these networks facilitate safety for women, queer and trans people, people of color, differently abled people and all people subject to systemic violence on a daily basis? How can community based networks of communication facilitate community autonomy? The Autonets workshop will focus on physical activities for building networks of safety, based on Theater of the Oppressed, the Pocha Method, self defense and dance methods. The workshop performance will engage a broad range of participants in a discussion of how we can form local networks of autonomy and solidarity in order to create community based responses to violences which are personal, gendered or state sponsored. Also inspired by the SOS SMS project, using text messages to respond to domestic violence, the workshop will consider a variety of approaches. Interested participants can take part in the second day of the workshop on building mesh networked wearable electronic fashion. This workshop performance was developed in collaboration with the Artivistic collective, based in Montreal.
Sites
A workshop performance was recently held in Riverside, California to start the first Local Autonomy Network. Also, workshops have taken place in Los Angeles at Hot and Bothered and at the East LA Repertory Theater, Detroit at the Allied Media Conference 2012 and Riverside again for Ladyfest Inland Empire.
Upcoming workshop performances are planned in Montreal, Quebec at the HTMlles Feminist New Media Festival and São Paulo, Brazil at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. See right side bar for links and dates.
Riverside Workshop
Below are responses from the Local Autonomy Networks Workshop Performance at Punk Ass Queers in Riverside, California, as well as a few photos of the performance. The images of the responses were slightly edited to remove the email sign-ups. The workshop participants discussed what types of violence do they experience in their community that they want to respond to and how can they use technology to create networks to respond to these issues.
Performances
Local Autonomy Networks :: Milwaukee :: Healing is Our Response
May 2, 2013
Performed at the Dark Side of the Digital Conference at the Center for 21st Century Studies in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My profound thanks go out the performers who performed with me! Performed by micha cárdenas, Ching-In Chen, Bridget Feerick, Shawna Elizabeth, Jennifer Morales, Ashkan Rezvani Naraghi, Shelly Schauer, Trenton Francis Schoonover, William Skaleski, Ali Sperling. Photos by Wes Tank.
More about this performance here: http://www.c21uwm.com/2013/03/14/building-local-autonomy-networks/
Local Autonomy Networks :: Los Angeles with Gender Justice LA
March 8, 2013
Performed at the University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts gallery and checkpoint outside of USC at Jefferson and Hoover. My deepest thanks go out to my collaborators from Gender Justice Los Angeles! Photos by Karl Baumann.
More about this performance: http://imap.usc.edu/news-and-events/local-autonomy-networks-los-angeles-with-gender-justice-la/#.U7BZM41dUpw
Autonets: We Already Know and We Don’t Yet Know
Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics VIII Encuentro, São Paulo, Brazil, January 2013, with micha cárdenas, Alessandra Renzi, Frantz Jerome, Benjamin Lundberg, Lily Mengesha, Aisha Jordan, Joana Fittipaldi and Tomaz Capobanco, photos by Macarena Gomez-Barris
Local Autonomy Networks – Find Each Other – 2012 Zero1 San Jose Biennial
Local Autonomy Networks: Find Each Other: 2012 Zero1 San Jose Biennial from micha cardenas on Vimeo.
Reflection on Zero1 performance on my Tumblr.
Local Autonomy Networks – Find Each Other – Montreal, Quebec – HTMlles Feminist New Media Festival
Finding Home – Allied Media Conference Opening Ceremony
Photos by Vanessa Miller, Creative Commons, By-Attribution, 2012
Performers: Althea Baird, Mariana Castañeda, Indee Mitchell
Find Each Other
Local Autonomy Networks – Find Each Other from micha cardenas on Vimeo.
Local Autonomy Networks: Find Each Other is a collaboration between Micha Cárdenas, PhD student in Media Arts and Practice at the University of Southern California, Allison Wyper, Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, UCLA, and NM Rosen, graduate of UCSD and dancer. The video above uses two early prototypes, but the actual Autonets garments are still in development. The devices will be made open source under an Open Hardware license and the designs will be made publicly available. We hope to be able to give working devices to people who need them through workshops once we feel they are working well enough to be distributed.
Find Each Other is an experimental movement piece in which two performers explore space to the sound of poetry, using proximity sensing electronic garments from the Autonets series. The lights in the performers’ clothing change based on the wireless signal strength, a rough approximation of distance and a visible interpretation of connection. The poetry and movement bring to life the issues raised by autonets, how we find people who can help prevent violence, how we find the ones we have political solidarity with and how we find the ones with whom to build commnunity and love.
About the Artists
Local Autonomy Networks / Autonets is a rapidly growing ecology of networks including artists, hackers and activists across a number of cities. Read bios for some of the people involved below, this is not a comprehensive list. See thePerformances page for more complete list of artists involved in each performance.
micha cárdenas is an artivist, hacktivist, poet, performer, student, educator, mixed-race trans femme latina who with movement as a technology of change. Committed to horizontal politics inspired by social movements in the global south and art practices based in trans experience, micha’s approach to artivism challenges the separation between artist and audience, student and teacher, art and politics. micha has been facilitating workshops building on what our bodies already know to envision community based responses to violence for three years in places including Los Angeles, Detroit, and Toronto. micha is a PhD candidate in Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) and Provost Fellow at University of Southern California and a member of the art collective Electronic Disturbance Theater 2.0. micha’s project Local Autonomy Networks was selected for the 2012 ZERO1 Biennial in San Jose and was the subject of three of her keynote performances. Her co-authored book The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities was published by Atropos Press in 2012. She blogs at michacardenas.org and tweets at @michacardenas.
Karen Anzoategui is a queer writer/performer and activist who sees her art and activism as an intersection of social change. She received her B.A. in theatre from Loyola Marymount University. Most known for her solo show Ser: L.A. vs. B.A., a Queer transnational tale, originally inspired by immigration legislation HR4437 and social manifestations in Argentina, was recently selected as a finalist for the Downtown Urban Theatre Festival in New York City. Karen has also presented her solo work as a keynote performer at Arizona State University’s Local to Global Justice Conference, MALCS conference, at the City of West hollywood PRIDE Festival, Macha Theatre, Hollywood Fringe Festival directed by Che’Rae Adams, to standing ovation crowds. Excerpts of her solo has been presented at: REDCAT, Casa 0101, Nate Holden Center with Teada and L.A.C.E. directed by Dino Dinco. You have seen Karen in ProClitvities directed by Virginia Grise at Highways Theatre , Henry V & The Changeling with Independent Shakespeare Co, Sissy by Ricardo Brach. She just closed the hit, Broadway Bound play Evangeline the Queen of Make Believe written by Louie Perez of Los Lobos, Rose Portillo and Theresa Chavez of About Productions. Her next solo show, Catholic School Daze, being presented at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, August 26th at 7pm, sets the stage for her experience at Catholic highschool where she was bullied by the administrators for being “gay” before she even knew she was queer.
Althea Baird is a video, performance, & collage artist using their work for shapeshifting and geometry:: prisms of + portals to memory, identity, violence, healing, speculation and prophesy.
Mariana Castañeda was born and raised in Detroit and is inspired by moving bodies and the relationship people have between their physical selves and emotional/mental/spiritual selves.
Samantha Gorman is a writer, scholar and media artist who composes for the intersection of text, performance and digital culture. She is concerned with issues surrounding contemporary reading and writing practices: particularly, what these practices mean for the future of our cultural heritage in an increasingly automated world. Her current work includes the hybrid iPad novella Penumbra: conceived as a re-imagining of the eBook. She holds an MFA and BA from Brown University in Literary Arts where she studied poetry and writing for digital media. After her MFA, she taught courses in performance studies, digital literature and English at the Rhode Island School of Design. In Fall 2012, Samantha relocated to LA and began her Ph.D at the Interdivisional Media Arts and Practice (iMAP) program in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Bianca Molina is an actress and activist artist. She is a Los Angeles Theatre Academy alumna as well as an art history student. She has been part of several world premiere productions such as: Bloody Red Heart: A Collection of Stories by Real Teenage Girls directed by Leslie Ferreira, Chekhov’s Sisters written, choreographed, and directed by Tina Kronis, and Cafe Vida written by Lisa Loomer. She is also Co-founder of Legalize Love, a student movement working on empowering the oppressed through education, art, critical thinking and love. Legalize Love also brought the First LGBTQ Pride Festival to Lubbock, Texas on October 8th, 2011 making history in the second most conservative city in America. Bianca is also currently working on a performance art collaboration entitled, A Woman With No Country, with cinematographer and photographer Stephanie Cisneros on what it means to be a Latin Woman in America.
Alison Reed is a performance/poet and PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, “Traumatic Utopias: Staging Power and Justice in Black and Latin@ Queer Performance,” looks at the way performance practices generate a lived utopic imagination rooted in shared memory. She proposes a theoretical model of “traumatic utopia” that emerges out of four performance sites: plays, performance literature, music, and digital performance. Her research interests more broadly lie at the intersection of performance studies, queer theory, and critical race and ethnic studies. She currently serves as Graduate Fellow of the Antiracism Inc. program housed within the American Cultures & Global Contexts Center at UCSB. She also co-organizes “Bodies in Space,” an annual guerrilla-style performance conference under the auspices of the Hemispheric South/s Research Initiative. Recently, she performed in the “Coming Out Monologues” at UCSB’s MultiCultural Center (October 2011) and the Second Annual Whitman-Stein Poetry Fest (April 2012).
N.M. Rosen is a dancer and scholar who works with critical theories of gender, race, and science, the history of performativity, and theories of embodiment and identity. Drawing from her classical dance background, her performance interests include investigation of physical and mental limits, the meaning and definition of movement and bodies, and the relationship between the somatic and the aesthetic. She is a founding member of a new performance group, MAFIA, which incorporates public space, body work, discomfort, and humor into its work. She just finished her undergraduate thesis at UCSD, “The Stirrings of a Nation: Maternal Nationhood as Embodied by Martha Ballard and Abigail Adams,” which examines maternalized discourses of nation building in post-Revolutionary War America, under the mentorship of Dr. Nicole Tonkovich. At no15 Magazine, an arts and fashion magazine, she acts as features editor, writer, interviewer, and as a part of the collaborative creative team. In all of her work, she seeks to encourage critical investigation, attempts to understand norms (and to disrupt them), and to challenge the ways that we define the world around us. Recent performances include a piece in winterWORKS, choreographed by Alison Deiterle-Smith and two pieces in New Directions, choreographed by Tanya Lewis and Lindsay Shield.
Addie Tinnell is an artist and anarchist organizer living in Los Angeles. She is half of the collaborative Cake and Eat Itwhich creates operas, fashion shows, performances, installations, salons, books and generally gives away a lot of free clothes. She is from Denver, Colorado.
Vassy is an L.A. based radical queer performing artist, burlesque dancer, & sex educator.
Allison Wyper makes live performance that bridges performance art, theatre, dance and conceptual art, vitalizing the performance space as a site of critical investigation with focus on participatory, one-on-one performance, as well as endurance and sustainability within extreme body-based performance practices. An associate of La Pocha Nostra since 2004, Allison has taught the Pocha Method with Guillermo Gómez-Peña at UCLA and Pocha’s San Francisco headquarters. Her work has been seen in Los Angeles (LACE, Highways, LACMA, Hammer Museum, Fowler Museum, UCLA, Cal State Long Beach, Craftswoman House), San Francisco (Performance Art Institute, Dance Mission, Galería de la Raza, NOHspace, The Garage, CounterPULSE), Boston (Boston Center for the Arts, the ICA, Boston Cyberarts Festival, Emerson College) and Berlin (Schwelle7). MFA Dance, UCLA. BA Theatre Studies, Emerson College.
Autonets in Living as Form (Nomadic Version), Antioch College
Autonets will be in Living as Form (The Nomadic Version), co-organized by Creative Time and Independent Curators International (ICI), and assembled in collaboration with Antioch College.
Exhibition dates: April 18- May 16th
Opening Reception April 18 7:00-9:00pm
Curated by Sara Black, Jillian Soto, and Anthony Romero
Guest Artists: MRCC Compass Group and Micha Cardenas
Living as Form (The Nomadic Version) is the flexible, expanding iteration of Living as Form, an exhibition curated by Nato Thompson and presented by Creative Time in the fall of 2011 in NewYork City. Lead project support for the original Living as Form exhibition was provided by the Annenberg Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Danish Consulate, the Andrew W.Mellon Foundation, the Mondriaan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Additional support for Living as Form (The Nomadic Version) was provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation; and the ICI Board of Trustees.
LOCATION: Herndon Gallery
Autonets Convergence Chicago – February 13, CAA
I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be continuing my Autonets hackathons with an event at the 2014 College Art Association conference in Chicago! I’m still looking for community partners, and hoping to focus on ways of using technology to end violence against queer and trans people of color, indigenous people, youth and sex workers. Leave a comment here to contact me if you are in Chicago and want to help make this conversation happen!
MEDIA LOUNGE WORKSHOP: AUTONETS CONVERGENCE CHICAGO: BUILDING OUR AUTONOMY TO END VIOLENCE
Time: 2/13/2014, 2:00 PM—5:00 PM
Location: Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor, Joliet Room (Map)
Organized by micha cárdenas, Provost Fellow and PhD Student, University of Southern California, Media Arts and Practice
Presentations by:
Shira Hassan of the Young Women’s Empowerment Project
Kxra of the Empowermentors Collective and the Free Culture Foundation
Autonets Convergence Chicago brings together hackers, anti-racist coders, gender hackers, gender changers, dancers, movement makers, poets, performers, media makers, anti-violence, transformative justice and prison abolitionist activists in a space to share their knowledge and their skills in order to help stop violence against queer and trans* people, people of color, disabled people, two-spirit people, sex workers and women. Join us for this jam session/hackathon for anti-violence organizers and tech makers that starts from the idea that prisons and police are a form of violence and seeks to develop affordable ways of using technology to build community based responses to violence.
This program is a part of UncommonCommons, an incubator for skills and knowledge-sharing in Media Lounge that responds to the themes of the commons and “communing.”UncommonCommons takes the form of series of workshops, film and video screenings, public discussions, and provocations by a range of international artists, filmmakers, activists, art critics, curators, community researchers, educators, lawyers, and ethnographers.
UncommonCommons was conceived by Jenny Marketou, an interdisciplinary artist , media researcher, and activist based in New York City. Media Lounge workshops are organized by Jenny Marketou with the assistance of media researcher and producer Nathanael Bassett, Parsons The New School. Video programs are curated by Jenny Marketou and Abina Manning, director of Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
http://conference.collegeart.org/2014/schedule/program?key=372
Venue is wheelchair accessible
Do not wear chemical scents to this event (more on scent free accessibility)
Please rsvp for ASL at email address in graphic or by leaving a comment on this post.
Building Our Autonomy: Autonets Convergence Toronto
Building Our Autonomy: Autonets Convergence Toronto
Wednesday, November 13, 7-9PM
Robarts Library, Room 1150, 130 St. George Street
Update Nov 11, 2013: This wednesday, join us for this networking event between anti-violence organizers and tech makers to come up with new ways to use technology to end violence! There will be short intros by myself about Autonets (http://autonets.org/), Farrah Khan about Barbra Schlifer Clinic (http://schliferclinic.com/) and Joan Ruzsa of Ritten House (http://joanr73.wordpress.com/
Autonets Convergence aims to brings together hackers, anti-racist coders, gender hackers, gender changers, dancers, movement makers, poets, performers, media makers, anti-violence, transformative justice and prison abolitionist activists by giving them a space to share their knowledge and their skills in order to help stop violence against queer and trans* people, people of color, disabled people, two-spirit people, sex workers and women. Engaging in discussion with the local community members based in Toronto as well as with the community at UofT about the kinds of violence we face daily, we will collectively work towards creative community-based responses to end violence, creating experiences and skills which at the end of the workshop we can take back to our own communities. The goal is to seed a movement of creative free/libre/open source technologies in concert with non-digital, community based solutions, to end gendered, racialized, sexual and ableist violence.
More information at http://autonets.org
Workshop organized by micha cárdenas and Patrick Kielty, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. micha is an artist, hackctivist, poet, performer, student, and educator, mixed-race trans femme latina survivor who works at the intersection of movement, technology and politics. www.michacardenas.org
https://www.facebook.com/events/207939576042480/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular
Venue is wheelchair accessible, please do not wear chemical scents to create accessibility for those with chemical injury. ASL can be provided, but you need to RSVP for ASL by commenting on this page or the facebook page.
Autonets Berlin / Lüneberg – The Safe Itinerant / The Insecurity of Mobility // Der sichere Wanderer/ Die Gefahren von Mobilität [photos]
Images from the movement performances in Berlin and Hamburg and the seminar discussions on the trains and at the Post Media Lab in Luneberg. Participating artists included myself, NM Rosen, Tikul and Zach Blas.
From the description of the performance:
We are safe when we walk.
We have walked for generations.
Your colonial regimes want to stop us, name and identify us.
We won’t be stopped by your policing violence,
We won’t be named by your regimes.
From Oscar Grant, a black man killed in San Francisco at a public train station by private train police, to the 2012 sexual assault of a woman by a group of men on bus in New Dehli, India, to the attack of CeCe McDonald while walking with friends, to the murder of Trayvon Martin while walking home, the promises of urban mobility are repeatedly belied by the violence that is used to police spaces of transit and the ways that access to mobility is regulated. This performance/seminar will consider the themes of mobility, violence and access, using the actual space of transit, the train and train station, as the space of performance, discussion and presentation. The performance is part of the project Local Autonomy Networks, by micha cárdenas, which works towards networks of community based responses to violence through performance and dance. This part of the series will consider how translocal networks of safety can be imagined within spaces which are intensely regulated yet fall between the lines of local regulations. Engaging with the Post Media Lab’s theme of Organization After Networks, this performance will consider how communities can organize for safety after their lives have been shaped by inter-urban and transnational transportation networks.
Safety in Numbers / Gendering of Public Space
The Itinerant scholar / the safe itinerant / the itinerant artist
The Insecurity of mobility / gender/sexuality/race in transit and across borders
From passport checks to biometric mobility controls
Ticketing systems / E-Ticketing
The price of speed / The cost of easy border crossing
Mobile Public Space / From Public to Corporate Transit / Public Interstitial Space
The promise of mobility / Disability and access
The movement piece was based on a choreographic score that came from actual safety strategies we have had to use in train stations in Berlin. In the first part of the score one dancer would get in between the other dancer and the audience, to protect them from the audience and allow them to move however they wanted, to make the act of holding space and solidarity against violence visible. In the second part, the roles of protector and protected switched. In the third part, we protected each other, imagining our backs to be a shield and protecting the space in between us.
More details at Post Media Lab.org
Autonets Berlin / Lüneberg – The Safe Itinerant / The Insecurity of Mobility // Der sichere Wanderer/ Die Gefahren von Mobilität
A mobile workshop, seminar, performance, between Berlin and Lüneberg
August 14, 2013, 11:30 – 16:00
Organized by micha cárdenas with support from the Post Media Lab
Featuring the work of:
Zach Blas
micha cárdenas
Tikul
NM Rosen
Pinar Yoldas
Starting with a performance at Berlin HbF, platform 7, 11:30AM, continuing with the following train itinerary and concluding at the Post Media Lab at Leuphana University at 15:45.
We are safe when we walk.
We have walked for generations.
Your colonial regimes want to stop us, name and identify us.
We won’t be stopped by your policing violence,
We won’t be named by your regimes.
From Oscar Grant, a black man killed in San Francisco at a public train station by private train police, to the 2012 sexual assault of a woman by a group of men on bus in New Dehli, India, to the attack of CeCe McDonald while walking with friends, to the murder of Trayvon Martin while walking home, the promises of urban mobility are repeatedly belied by the violence that is used to police spaces of transit and the ways that access to mobility is regulated. This performance/seminar will consider the themes of mobility, violence and access, using the actual space of transit, the train and train station, as the space of performance, discussion and presentation. The performance is part of the project Local Autonomy Networks, by micha cárdenas, which works towards networks of community based responses to violence through performance and dance. This part of the series will consider how translocal networks of safety can be imagined within spaces which are intensely regulated yet fall between the lines of local regulations. Engaging with the Post Media Lab’s theme of Organization After Networks, this performance will consider how communities can organize for safety after their lives have been shaped by inter-urban and transnational transportation networks.
Themes to be addressed:
The cloud versus a home / colonial dream of mobility versus decolonial construction
Safety in Numbers / Gendering of Public Space
The Itinerant scholar / the safe itinerant / the itinerant artist
The Insecurity of mobility / gender/sexuality/race in transit and across borders
From passport checks to biometric mobility controls
Ticketing systems / E-Ticketing
The price of speed / The cost of easy border crossing
Mobile Public Space / From Public to Corporate Transit / Public Interstitial Space
The promise of mobility / Disability and access
Inspired by The Political Equator (http://www.politicalequator.org/), my daily sense of danger and my daily experiences of harassment and violence
Starting with a performance at Berlin HbF, platform 7, 11:30AM, continuing with the following train itinerary and concluding at the Musikschule at Leuphana University at 15:45.
To join, use the following itinerary for DB
Halt Datum Zeit Gleis Fahrt Reservierung
Berlin Hbf (tief) 14.08. ab 12:16 7
Hamburg Hbf 14.08. an 13:57 5a/b, ICE 1612
Hamburg Hbf 14.08. ab 14:53 14a/b
Lüneburg 14.08. an 15:25 1, ICE 681
Discussions will be primarily in English. I am currently looking for an ASL interpreter.
Berlin HbF is wheelchair accessible, detailed information about access is here:
http://press.visitberlin.de/en/news-release/barrier-free-berlin
Übersetzung
Autonets Lüneburg – Der sichere Wanderer/ Die Gefahren von Mobilität
Workshop/Seminar/Performance in Bewegung – zwischen Berlin und Lüneburg
14. August 2013
Organisiert von Micha Cárdenas mit Unterstützung vom Post Media Lab
Mit Arbeiten von:
Zach Blas
Micha Cárdenas
Tikul
NM Rosen
Pinar Yoldas
Start: Berlin Hauptbahnhof, Ziel: Post-Media Lab
Wir sind sicher, wenn wir uns bewegen.
Wir bewegen uns schon seit Generationen.
Eure Kolonialregierungen wollen uns aufhalten, kennzeichnen und dauerhaft identifizieren.
Wir werden uns von eurer Kontrollgewalt nicht aufhalten lassen,
Wir werden uns nicht von euren Regimes bestimmen lassen.
Von Oscar Grant, einem schwarzen Mann, der in San Francisco an einer öffentlichen Bahnstation von einem Polizisten einer privaten Bahngesellschaft erschossen wurde, bis hin zu dem sexuellen Übergriff, der 2012 von einer Gruppe Männern an einer Frau in einem Bus in Neu-Delhi/Indien verübt wurde – wiederholt werden die Versprechen von städtischem Transport durch die Gewalt, die in polizeilichen Durchfahrtsgebieten herrscht und die Mittel, durch die der Mobilitätszugang eingeschränkt wird widerlegt. Diese Performance/Das Seminar wird sich daher mit den Themen Mobilität, Gewalt und Zugang beschäftigten indem es sich tatsächliche Durchreisegebiete, Züge und Bahnstationen als Veranstaltungsort für Aufführungen, Diskussionen und Präsentationen zu nutzen macht. Die Veranstaltung ist Teil des Projekts „Local Autonomy Networks“ von Micha Cárdenas, welches ein Netzwerk aus gemeindebasierten Performance- und Tanzprojekten zum Thema Gewalt aufbauen will. Dieser Teil der Serie wird sich damit beschäftigen, wie man sich translokale Sicherheitsnetzwerke innerhalb bisher intensiv lokal regulierter Gegenden vorstellen kann. In Bezug auf das Leitmotiv des Post-Media Labs „Organization After Networks“ wird dieses Programm Wege thematisieren, wie sich soziale Bezugsgruppen mit Blick auf Sicherheit noch organisieren können, nachdem sich das Leben an innerstädtischen und transnationalen Transportnetzwerken ausgerichtet und orientiert hat.
Angesprochene Themen:
Die Cloud versus ein Heim/ Der koloniale Traum von Mobilität versus entkolonialisierter Konstruktion
Sicherheit in Zahlen/ Die Vergeschlechtlichung von öffentlichem Raum
Der Wanderschüler/Der sichere Wanderer/Der Wanderkünstler
Die Gefahr von Mobilität/Geschlecht, Sexualität und Rasse an Grenzen und jenseits dieser
Von der Passkontrollen zu biometrischen Mobilitätskontrollen
Fahrkartensysteme/E-Ticketing
Der Preis von Geschwindigkeit/Die Kosten für einfache Grenzüberquerungen
Die mobile Öffentlichkeit/Von öffentlicher zur kooperativen Durchreise/Öffentliche Grenzgebiete
Mobilitätsversprechen/Behinderung und Zugang
Inspiriert von The Political Equator (http://www.politicalequator.org/), meiner täglichen Wahrnehmung von Gefahr und täglichen Erfahrungen mit Bedrohung und Gewalt.
THINK TANK today with Autonets in Berlin at Platoon Kunsthalle
MOVEMENTS OF DISTURBANCE: EXCESS ECOLOGY, POST-DIGITAL NETWORKS, AND QUEER ILLEGIBILITY.
This screening and panel includes three research-based artist presentations that use political disturbance to speculate, envision, and perform posthuman, metahuman, and unhuman futures.
16:00-18:00
https://www.facebook.com/events/372058109589437/
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Jovan Wolfe wearing Autonets Hoodie Designed by micha cárdenas and Ben Klunker, image by micha cárdenas
Micha Cárdenas
artist, writer, dancer, poet, hacktivist, Post Media Lab Fellow
PhD Student Media Arts + Practice, University of Southern California
“Building the Movements to Keep Us Safe” Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is an artivist project focused on creating digital and non-digital networks of communication to increase community autonomy and reduce violence against women, LGBTQI people, people of color and other groups who continue to survive violence on a daily basis. Autonets considers how movement is a technology that can be used for decolonization and how dance and performance can be used to develop networks for community based responses to violence.
Pinar Yoldas,
Art, Art History, and Visual Studies, Duke University
“An Ecosystem of Excess” An Ecosystem of Excess is an attempt to create a post-human eco-system, a living community of speculative organisms and their environment. The project takes the idea that we are surrounded by “man-made extreme environments” as its starting point. According to the primordial soup theory, about four billion years ago life starts in the oceans when inorganic matter turns into organic molecules. Today, the oceans have turned into a plastic soup . This project asks a very simple question:”If life started today in the oceans of plastic, what kind of life forms would emerge out of this contemporary primordial ooze? To answer this question the project suggests a series of interconnected species burgeoning in pelagic plastic, chemical sludge and other debris.
Zach Blas,
Literature, Information Science + Information Studies, Visual Studies, Duke University
“Queer Illegibility and the Facial Weaponization Suite” Facial Weaponization Suite develops forms of collective, artistic protest against biometric facial recognition, global surveillance, and informatic capture–as well as the inequalities these technologies propagate–by making masks in community-based workshops that are used for public intervention and performance. These masks are forms of queer escape and opacity that refuse the parsing, categorizing, and calculations of standardized, normalized recognition and perception registers; the masks attempt to generate a presence that is illegible to such forms of control. One mask in the suite, the Fag Face Mask, is a response to scientific studies that link determining sexual orientation through rapid facial recognition. This mask is generated from the biometric facial data of many queer men’s faces, resulting in a mutated, alien facial mask that cannot be read or parsed by biometric facial recognition technologies.
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to know more about the artists Micha Cardenas, Zach Bas and Pinar Yoldas please visit our webpage:
http://www.kunsthalle.com/berlin/program/think-tank-sessions
PLATOON . cultural development
schönhauser allee 9
10119 berlin . germany
tel: +49-(0)30-2888-2160
berlin@kunsthalle.com
http://www.kunsthalle.com/berlin
http://www.platoon.org
parking lot available!
HOW TO GET HERE
by public transportation
U2 to Senefelder Platz, walk south (2min)
U2, M8, Bus 142 to Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, walk north (2min)
U8 to Rosenthaler Platz, walk east (6min)
Autonets Updates July 4, 2013
I’m very excited to have some people on the Autonets mailing list (sign up here!), and reading this blog, who want to help build a movement for preventing violence using a wide variety of technologies, from wearable electronics to poetry, and who want to share those resources in their own cities! I would love if people could chime in with a comment so everyone knows who’s reading and share whatever you like, such as where you’re located, if you’ve participated in Autonets workshops before and how you’d like to participate in building this movement! I would love to hear about efforts you are making locally (or not locally!) to build community based safety!
Here are a few updates:
I uploaded code from the existing Autonets prototypes along with wiring diagrams and a great Xbee tutorial to the Autonets wiki today. Soon I’ll add images of the sewing/wiring of the existing prototype hoodies, dress and bracelets.
http://wiki.autonets.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
This week I facilitated a workshop with Maggie’s Sex Worker Action Project in Toronto! It was incredible and raised a lot of new ideas about the links between safety for trans women, two spirit people, sex workers and disabled people. Preventing violence doesn’t have to mean only stopping violent acts, but can also mean working for access for people with different abilities in our communities. Here is the text of the performance I did at the event after the workshop, with a link to more info about Maggie’s and resources for people in Toronto:
http://transreal.org/2013/07/04/from-feminism-to-decolonization-a-femme-ifesting-vision-ritual/
I also led two Autonets workshops, one on wearable electronics and one on movements that keep us safe, in Detroit at the Allied Media Conference. You can read more about that experience here:
http://transreal.org/2013/06/27/we-need-media-that-creates-worlds-without-trans-misogyny/
Next, I’m heading to Berlin, Germany, to organize a workshop and performance in Luneberg. If you know of anyone in the area who is interested in participating, please pass this on to them. More info about that residency is here:
From a Free Software Movement to a Free Safety Movement
This is a call to all feminist hackers, anti-racist coders, gender hackers, genderchangers, queer and trans hackers, political hackers, dancers, movement makers, poets, performers, anti-violence activists and networked activists to come together to help stop violence against queer and trans* people, people of color, disabled people and women.
Many forms of daily violence: sexual, gender, racial, ableist and state-sponsored (committed by police) are only increasing. As global warming, neoliberalism, and neocolonialism continue, more and more people are subject to violence on a daily basis due to social instability. This is a call to people to acknowledge that the Internet era has not brought more safety but less. This is a call to say we need more people hacking safety, where hacking involves a creative use of the imagination to solve a problem. Why do we have better software to share pictures of lunch than we do to keep each other safe?
These solutions can take all forms from technological ones to social to combinations of technological and social. To think about ending violence with technology we need to think broadly about what violence means and what technology is: movement is a technology, gender is a technology, language is a technology, code is a technology. We need more collaboration between hackers, activists and artists to end violence. We need networked devices which people can use to call on their personal networks for help, games to teach people to not rape, mechanisms for bystanders to step in and stop violence, discrete ways for people in private situations to call for help when violence occurs in their homes.
I started the project Local Autonomy Networks two years ago to create wearable electronics to prevent sexual and gender violence against queer and trans* people of color. In those two years I have made prototypes of devices including dresses, hoodies and bracelets which have wireless transmitters in them and can be used to call for help. Some of these devices can detect proximity of other devices. I have been working towards adding GPS units so that the call for help can be accompanied with the location. But, I am only one person. This problem is much much bigger than me.
I am an artist, hacker, activist, writer. I am not a business person or an engineer. I have also spent much of the last two years doing workshops and performances with people in different cities to build the social agreements necessary for us to keep each other safe in a world where police often cause more violence, if they even show up. In some of the cities I work in people have told me repeatedly that they will not call the police because they won’t ever show up. Anti-violence activists have also told me that it is common that queer and trans people and people of color know not to call the police because they inflict more violence in most cases.
I am shifting my role in this from building electronics to building the infrastructure for a network of networks, for people to be able to contribute and think together and discuss this problem together. Lots of people. The free software movement has been incredibly successful since it was begun thirty years ago. What we need now is a movement for free safety, a movement of people who want to figure out how to make transformative justice happen in increasingly networked societies, a movement that will develop networks for safety that don’t rely on the corporations and police that daily perpetuate violence on our communities, a movement of people who will agree to keep each other safe from unjust forms of violence.
This needs to happen in a distributed way, and can’t depend on me. Everywhere I have gone in the past two years throughout the Americas and in Europe, people have told me:we need this here. Violence is a problem that is happening everywhere and is getting worse. So please join me and help build this movement and send me and everyone else an email. Or tweet about it. Or Facebook about it. There are many ways of using existing technologies such as Circle Of 6, Foursquare and Group Me for safety.
What is important to me is that solutions need to be affordable. There is already a huge industry of safety products and if safety is something that only certain people can afford and clearly that is an unjust situation. So we must make these solutions affordable.
What is also crucial in this movement is to develop safety solutions that maintain people’s privacy. Solutions which can be exploited by law enforcement to surveille people do not make them more safe but less.
What is most important to me in this movement is to center the needs of the most affected groups of people: transgender women of color are the number one targets of hate crimes, sex workers are often subject to violence, disabled people are also subject to violence on the daily basis and can benefit uniquely from networks of communication and support.
I have set up a wiki at wiki.autonets.org to help start this conversation and I will start putting in detailed documentation of the prototypes I have made and the workshops I have facilitated. This is a call for you to take up this project in your own city, talk to others about how to build networks, technological or not, of safety and support for survivors of violence.
To join this discussion, you have lots of options!
Post a comment at autonets.org/movement
or
sign up for the discussion mailing list here:
http://lists.autonets.org/listinfo.cgi/discussion-autonets.org
or
Email movement at autonets d0t org for a wiki editing account
or
come to the Allied Media Conference in Detroit and participate in my two sessions
Wearable Electronics and Building Autonets
Movements that Keep Us Safe: Autonets
Please help spread the word about this movement. My hope is that it will grow and spread and we will see a coming together of many activists applying media and technical skills to the problem of daily violence around the world in a multitude of ways, sharing skills and knowledge and reducing the harm that people experience daily.
For updates, check back at autonets.org/home
If you can provide a translation of this document, please email movement at autonets d0t org.
Video of Keynote at Dark Side of the Digital Autonets: Post-Digital Networks, Post-Corporate Communications
I’m so excited to share this video, as I haven’t had a video of one of my talks online in a while and I was very happy with how this talk turned out.
Also check out David Golumbia’s thorough review of #C21DSD which also summarizes my talk on the Postcolonial Digital Humanities blog. I wish he had noted that my talk was centered in a decolonial strategy of decolonizing the digital, but I’m still thrilled that he wrote a review that summarized all the plenary talks.
Local Autonomy Networks: Post Digital Networks, Post Corporate Communications
From the temporary shutdown of ThePirateBay.org and Wikileaks.org at the DNS level to the shutdown of cell phone communications to prevent protests in Egypt and San Francisco, corporate communications infrastructures are obsolete for resistant communities. In contrast, people in resistance are imagining new post-digital futures. My work on the Transborder Immigrant Tool led me to Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets), which is being developed in collaboration with community based organizations in Detroit, Los Angeles and Bogotá, Colombia. Digital technology is the basis for an epistemology often referred to as “the digital” which is imbricated with western logics. To work towards post-digital networks is to participate in a decolonization of technology and to imagine possibilities that both precede and follow the digital. My intervention is to make a trans of color critique, taking inspiration from the queer of color critique, that rejects the binary logic of the digital and looks to oppressed communities for alternative logics.
Introduction: Heather Warren Crow (Peck School of the Arts, UWM)
Workshop at Transmediale 13 – Building Local Autonomy Networks
It says that it’s already sold out, but just in case, I’m posting it here so people know it’s going on! Also, don’t miss Sandy Stone’s Keynote in the Desire track!
Building Local Autonomy Networks
Local Autonomy Networks (Autonets) is an artivist project focused on creating networks of communication to increase community autonomy and reduce violence against women, LGBTQI people (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex), people of color and other groups who continue to survive violence on a daily basis. The networks are both on- and offline, including handmade wearable electronic fashion and face-to-face agreements between people. The networks are being established through a series of workshops, performances, presentations and discussions at art, activist and academic venues in the Americas and Europe. The project was initiated by Micha Cárdenas and is rapidly expanding into an ecology of networks involving many artists, hackers and activists.
Participants learn the basics of wearable electronics with Arduino, an open-source, single-board microcontroller and how to make their own sensors out of conductive thread and fabric. Additionally, participants are briefly introduced to the ways that Xbee transmitters can be used to make mesh networks. These technologies are the basis of Autonets.
More info: www.autonets.org
Participation with pre-registration only.
This Workshop is full!