Jovan Wolfe in Autonets hoodie designed by micha cárdenas and Ben Klunker
 micha cárdenas in Autonets dress designed in collaboration with Ben Klunker     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 Josemicha cárdenas, Allison Wyper, Karen Anzoategui, Bianca Molina, Ezak Perez, Jovan Wolfe and Alison Reed, photo by Karl Baumann. |
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.
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. We are currently in collaboration with groups wanting to use Autonets to reduce violence against genderqueer and trans people of color in LA, prevent disappearances in Bogotá, Colombia and facilitate queer youth of color to avoid violence in Detroit. Autonets is fashion hacking for social reorganization, recoding the meaning of fashion symbols such as hoodies that have associations ranging from Trayvon Martin to the Black Bloc, or femme fashion elements like dresses and bracelets, into symbols of connectivity and autonomy.
Upcoming Events 2013 January 11-20, São Paulo, Brazil Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics VIII Encuentro, performance and workshop January 29 – Feb 2, Berlin Feb 13-16, New York April 19, Los Angeles April 19 – July 21, Amsterdam April 26, Lüneburg, Germany May 2-4, Milwaukee Plenary, Dark Side of the Digital May 8-13, Montreal, Quebec Keynote, Differential Mobilities Conference May, Detroit, Michigan Previous Events 2012 November 8, San Francisco
November 10-14, Montreal, QC November 15-18, San Juan, Puerto Rico November 22-24, Lüneberg, Germany
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