Local Autonomy Networks: Find Each Other: 2012 Zero1 San Jose Biennial [video]

Posted on January 8, 2013 by michamaya

Local Autonomy Networks: Find Each Other: 2012 Zero1 San Jose Biennial from micha cardenas on Vimeo.

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. 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 started by Micha Cárdenas but is rapidly expanding into an ecology of networks involving many 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, when activated, will alert everyone in range of the the local mesh network who is wearing another autonet garment that someone needs help and will indicate that person’s direction and distance.

Performed at the (e)Merge Street Festival at the 2012 Zero1 San Jose Biennial. The movement in this piece was developed in the Autones workshop by the workshop participants.

autonets.org

Concept: micha cárdenas, Allison Wyper, Karen Anzoategui

Performers: micha cárdenas, Allison Wyper, Karen Anzoategui, Bianca Molina, Ezak Perez, Jovan Wolfe and Alison Reed

Videography by Karl Baumann.