[spectre] Tonight : Local Autonomy Networks:: Los Angeles

[micha cárdenas]

[image: usc autonets
poster]<http://imap.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/usc-autonets-poster1.jpg>



Local Autonomy Networks :: Los Angeles with Gender Justice LA

March 8, 2013

USC School of Cinematic Arts Gallery, SCA 120

6:30-9:30pm



6:30-8:30pm Workshop using Theater of the Oppressed

8:30-9pm Opening reception

9-9:30pm Performance

Exhibition hours

Sat-sun 3/9-3/10, 12-4pm

Mon-Thurs, 3/11-3/14, 11am-7pm



“The colonial world is a compartmentalized world… The colonized world is
divided in two. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the
barracks and the police stations… In capitalist societies, education… those
aesthetic forms of respect for the status quo, instill in the exploited a
mood of submission and inhibition which considerably eases the task of
agents of law and order.”

“The [government] agent does not alleviate oppression or mask domination.
He displays and demonstrates them with the clear conscience of the law
enforcer, and brings violence into the homes and minds of the colonized
subject.”

- Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

On March 8, 2013, Local Autonomy Networks, a project started by Micha
Cárdenas, will be joining with Gender Justice LA’s Theater of the Oppressed
Group to host a workshop and performance about the militarization of
college campuses and community-based responses to violence. Starting with
the question, “Does this look like safety to you?”, the two-hour workshop
will respond to the recent policy at the University of Southern California
to set up mini borders, complete with metal expanding fences and
computer-aided checkpoints, at all of the school’s entrances at night.
These checkpoints, reminiscent of both the US/Mexico border and the
Israel/Palestine border, reinforce a militarized mindset that contradicts
USC’s image of integration with the surrounding community. ID checks such
as these only serve to make transgender people and undocumented people
unsafe, effectively excluding them from the community. Join us for a
two-hour workshop that will culminate in a performance just outside one of
the checkpoints where we will use Theater of the Oppressed to embody what
safety looks like to our community of genderqueer and transgender people of
color and allies.



More about Local Autonomy Networks / Autonets:

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, help
provide safety for sex workers in Toronto 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.

http://autonets.org

More about GJLA:

Gender Justice LA is building a strong grassroots multi-racial coalition of
transgender people and allies to advocate for our rights, win concrete
improvements in our lives, and challenge oppression.

Are you ready to help us transform Los Angeles?

http://www.gjla.org/




-- 
micha cárdenas
PhD Student, Media Arts and Practice, University of Southern California
Provost Fellow, University of Southern California

New Directions Scholar, USC Center for Feminist Research

MFA, Visual Arts, University of California, San Diego

Co-Author, The Transreal: Political Aesthetics of Crossing Realities,
http://amzn.to/x8iJcY

blog: http://transreal.org
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