Philip

Trotter 33327830 After the Internet Word Count: 3151

Safety in Numbers: Exploring the Network as a Queering of Security

Why is the world so unsafe? More software than the human mind can comprehend,
cameras at the end of every arm, laws for every conceivable eventuality, etiquette built into
the birth of a child. Yet someone can still walk the streets terrified, can sit behind the walls
that used to shut the world out and still be the target of violence. Its a culture that would
rather turn out its lights than its Wi-Fi and CCTV, that thinks nothing of being safe but
secures the nation when attacked. Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker tell us that
todays media physically requires the maintained, constant, continuous interaction of
users. This is the political tragedy of interactivity1 however, is it really so simple to call the
network a tragedy? The network has come to a point where it shapes rather than is shaped
by society, that we behave as the digital taught us, constantly connecting and relating
ourselves through the network model. We now sit at a point in our belief that much like
writer Ulises Ali Mejias explains, the benefits outweigh the costs, making it unrealistic and
undesirable to say no to the network2. However, it is fruitless to consider that the injustices
of the network model must simply be the present moment, that the way of the network
must be left to violate the lives it doesnt value. In this essay I intend to see to what extent
the idea of safety, and more specifically the artivist projects of Micha Crdenas that look to
proscribe it, can address the costs of the network society. In doing so I look to question
whether the network society can be better placed to avoid violence and ultimately begin to
develop a fairer basis for all forms of networking.
Before we can think to tackle Crdenas work, we must first understand what we mean by
network. A network on a surface level is simply a representation of intersections formed by
interaction between points. Often expressed as nodes and edges, nodes act as points
representing the object of production and/or reception, often both human and non-human.
This is to say that to be a node is not solely a causal affair; it is not to do this or do that3
but it is a notable intersection of what the network is in place to carry. Like-wise, edges are

1
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007) 124
2
Ulises Ali Mejias. The Outside of Networks as a Method for Acting in the World in Off the
Network: Disrupting the Digital World. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
157
3
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 40
Philip Trotter 33327830

seen to connect or disconnect certain nodes of the network dependent on its form and the
relation the nodes hold to the network content. Galloway and Thacker in their book The
Exploit use graph representations to explain this relationship in multiple formulations
including centralized, decentralized and distributed4. Yet, Galloway and Tackers network as
graphs doesnt cover the full surface complexity of the network model. When nodes and
edges produce the graph model, the shapes or spaces formed are inconsequential however,
Ulises Ali Mejias explains that this space is not empty but inhabited by multitudes that do
not conform to the organizing logic of the network. As far as the network is concerned the
paranodal exists only to be bypassed or collapsed in the act of linking, of reducing distance
between nodes. But whether it is acknowledged or not, this space gives nodes their history
and identity5. The paranodal is the surround and enclosed space of the network model that
contains the resisters, rejecters, expelled and excluded from the particularity of that
network, not to be thought of as a totalized position of a multitude outside all forms of
networking. This is hinted at with the thinking of Galloway and Thacker, in that to have a
network, one needs a multiplicity of nodes. Yet the mere existence of this multiplicity of
nodes in no way implies an inherently democratic, ecumenical, or egalitarian order. Quite
the opposite6. Simply put, a node/edge model should not be thought of as a whole and so
in rethinking networks, we must understand the network model as nodes, edges and
spaces. Often it is this interplay of elements, in the assimilation of new nodes, the paranodal
use of edges and reducing of paranodal space, where violence can occur. As Galloway and
Thacker point out here, it is not simply in the representational appearance of a networks
distribution but in each the elements relation to the network specificity that can highlight
these areas.
Micha Crdenas project Local Autonomy Networks (LAN) is an artivist project focusing on
creating networks of communication to increase community autonomy and reduce violence
against women, LGBTQI people and people of colour. Built upon an interrelation of
handmade wearable electronic fashion and face to face agreements between people, the
network in question is what Galloway and Thacker would see as a system of
interrelationality, whether biological or informatic, organic or inorganic, technical or

4
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 31
5
Ulises Ali Mejias. Off the Network. 153
6
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 13

Philip Trotter 33327830

naturalwith the ultimate goal of undoing the polar restrictiveness of these pairings.7 A
variant on their distributed graph, Crdenas project is a mesh network, each networked
node connected to every other node, posing horizontal relationality and off-line
connectivity. For Crdenas, the system is designed to be for a collective in close proximity,
allowing you to send out information about location and situation to those able to provide a
response as a way for community to combat violence from both society and authority. LAN
is designed to assist within Mejias thinking that given the multiplicity of networks an
individual can belong to at any given time, being paranodal in relation to one network can
obviously serve as the bases for belonging to another.8 Designed as a safety tool, it comes
out of issues of systematic violence against minoritarian groups by police in turning to the
authorities for assistance with other societal violation. Minoritarians such as those
transgender, due to their position already often paranode from a local society, become a
fragile node within the policing network, a system that often takes their biological over their
preferred gender identity, opening up to continuous edges of violence. What a fragile node
refers to is those whom to be a node is to exist inseparably from a set of possibilities and
parameters.9 These possibilities and parameters often originate from within
heteronormativity or binary logic, hence someone transgender maybe subject to the
network under oppressed inclusion and forced identity, with the protective notions of the
these systems often bypassed.
Though it is a locatable safety network project, it is not to be confused with systems such
as Apples Find My Friends (FMF) which use GPS within phone devices to track your location
at all times by combination of online and phone connectivity. This safety tool functions
providing similar information as LAN technology but functions globally through systems of
selected viewership and trusts between users and corporation. What it forms is an isolation
from a moment of need to form a constant connective surveillance, whereas the LAN
proximity mesh system forms a safety tool no longer seen as an individual problem to be
solved by an individual, but as social problems to be dealt with collectively10. Systems such

7
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 28
8
Ulises Ali Mejias. Off the Network. 155
9
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 40
10
Micha, Crdenas. Local Autonomy Networks: Post-Digital Networks, Post-Corporate
Communications. Media-N. Vol 9 No 2 (2013) Accessed April 5, 2016

Philip Trotter 33327830

as FMF are systems of security rather than systems of safety, they work off the assumption
anything outside the system is uncontrolled and paranodal and is unable to function
effectively in relation to other networks such as the police. What LAN looks to do is reject
this assumption and looks to oppressed communities for alternative logics11 for producing
a network of safety between two positions of violence and oppression.
This differentiation between what constitutes security and safety is key to the possibilities
of networks. Crdenas looks to establish networks of people who agree to keep each other
safe12, a term that as expressed in the Feminist Server as the control of recognized hazards
to achieve an acceptable level of risk. This can take the form of being protected from the
event or from exposure.13 Therefore a network of safety specifically works as a space of
withdrawal so as to collectively establish which other networks are suitable for the specifics
of the node at any given time. How this differs from security is seen in the writing of
Galloway and Thacker, explaining that safety is about being removed from danger, being
apart and surrounded by walls and protections of various kinds, and hence is a
fundamentally modern notion; but security means being held in place, being integrated and
immobile, being supported by redundant networks of checks and backups, and hence is a
thoroughly information-age idea.14 Hence, for networks that work on the principle of
security rather than safety, there is a inherent desire for the violation of non-conforming
nodes through controls or protocols working toward integration or paranodality, allowing
for a violence to take place. The Feminist Server gives a similar story to Galloway and
Thacker, stating security is the degree of resistance to, or protection from, harm. It applies
to any vulnerable and valuable asset, such as a person, dwelling, community, nation, or
organization. Security provides a form of protection where a separation is created between
the assets and the threat. These separations are generically called "controls," and
sometimes include changes to the asset or the threat.15. What we see here is that networks
of security do not necessarily look to the nodal or human element when referring to a

11
Micha, Crdenas. Media-N. Accessed April 5, 2016
12
Micha, Crdenas. Media-N. Accessed April 5, 2016
13
Constant. The Feminist Server Last Updated December 12th, 2012. Accessed April 6th,
2016.
14
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 75
15
Constant. The Feminist Server Last Updated December 12th, 2012. Accessed April 6th,
2016.

Philip Trotter 33327830

protection from harm; in fact, they can place the integrity of the network itself over those
using it.
Within networks such as the police, the network of security is placed with protocols to
resist the deviations of society. For minoritarians caught within security networks, this can
mean that as an asset they can be made to fit the workings of a network being seen
equally as threat due to being outside the binary parameter. Rather than harm the system
often working on a global or national level, the network of security produces violence upon
the individual asset. Hence when binary genders are used for example, the system of
security adapts the single asset over harming the national system. For Crdenas network of
safety, the importance comes that all the nodes involved in the mesh are of a created
agreement without systematic binary logic that in protecting the nodes simultaneously
preserves the integrity of the network rather than an either/or scenario. Thought LAN
would still rely on the human will to respond and the social agreements as to what to do in
case someone else in the network needs help,16 the dependence of the network to
maintain nodes allows a response in relation to risk that removes a greater assured
exposure to individual violence.
Because the network of safety relies on an agreement, it can seem to require a far more
rigid commonality than networks of security. Networks of security, as expressed by
Galloway and Thacker, exert massive control over technologies on a global scale17 which
in terms of Crdenas can refer widely as movement is a technology, gender is a technology,
language is a technology, code is a technology18. All these technologies are highly adaptive
and therefore to exert control there also has to be an adaptive nature to networks. What is
normally used is protocol, which Galloway and Thacker see as being less about power
(confinement, discipline, normativity), and more about control (modulation, distribution,
flexibility).19 This means protocols can be used to hold the network but allow it enough
flexibility to produce integration and assimilation so as to not be harmed. For example,
language is regulated by protocols of spelling and grammar that due to the likes of youth

16
Micha, Crdenas. Media-N. Accessed April 5, 2016
17
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 42
18
Micha Crdenas. From a Free Software Movement to a Free Safety Movement Mute.
Published July 10, 2013. Accessed April 4, 2016.
19
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 28

Philip Trotter 33327830

culture and technological advancement has integrated to fit with new nodes of value or
emerged contexts. However, this assimilation and integration of the network resorts to a
fixed position or intention for a network of security, namely in the place of our example that
an official mode of spelling and grammar still controls contexts such as education or
discussions of official language. In any case, networks of safety such as Crdenas can
perpetually develop, forming new language, movement, gender and code as it is developed
in a collective understanding of assessing risk to the collective unit and individual node,
forming the edges of the mesh network not into communicative channels that bridge a
paranodality of non-assimilated difference but a paranodality containing the normative
structures already suitable for current protocol.
Nevertheless, this is not a network form without protocol. What we see is something
similar to the thinking of queer theorist Jos Esteban Muozs and his antidisciplinary
protocol. What antidisciplinary protocol alludes to is a control that leads to a perpetually
unfinished system that is by its very nature antisystemological20. It is a control that governs
the network without producing any finished requirement beyond the mutual involvement of
each node to be a node. This queer dimension to the network of safety through the
antidisciplinary protocol links strongly to Crdenas personal investment in the project in
that queer theory has made one lesson explicitly clear: the set of behaviours and codes of
conduct that we refer to as feminine and masculine are not slaves to the biological21. This
network of safety is not subject to the typical systemic binary protocol, producing the
network of safety takes the protocol model the network requires and queers it so as to
require no more from a community than nodality itself. No longer is the network about the
finished intention of node-to-node transition, keeping elements outside the system but an
open ended control that allows the network to be held together simply by the agreement to
belong in common.
This use of protocol without finitude is not the only aspect of the project to define the
network of safety within queerness. Also as part of the LAN projects was a performance of
movements on the public transport network between Berlin, Hamburg and Lneburg.
Crdenas describes part of the performance with NM Rosen and Tikul on platforms from the

20
Jos Esteban Muoz. Cruising Utopia. (New York: New York University Press, 2009) 126
21
Jos Esteban Muoz. Cruising Utopia. 76

Philip Trotter 33327830

three cities in Movements of Safety, A Safety Movement, Safety in Movement: 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.22 What is happening is very much a performative
rendering of the physical possibility for the LAN to produce safety and intervention. It is
easily forgotten that the projects network of safety contains very real people dealing with
fragile nodality or paranodality from not just systemic networks but everyday concrete
networks too. The performance reacts similarly to how a network of safety assesses a risk
and produces a space outside of normative networks of security for the nodes involved. The
antidisciplinary protocol amalgamates with Crdenas idea that movement is a
technology23, allowing the body itself to be antidisciplinary and challenge the network
promises of urban mobility [that] are repeatedly belied by the violence that is used to
police spaces of transit and the ways that access to mobility is regulated.24 Networks such
as the transport systems where Crdenas, NM Rosen and Tikul performed are what
Galloway and Thacker identify as the sights of the society of control, whereby individuals
move in a continuous fashion between sites (work-from-home, distance learning, etc.)25
within the compliance of networks of security. The body is always placed in a perpetual
state of movement allowing the protocols of control to applied in the network model; from
regulating the movement of individuals with the use of symbols and markers to the constant
recording of identity. Where the network of safety can intervene is in producing a space
that removes the inevitability of the minoritarian becoming fragile node in these networks,
forcibly choosing to perform or paranode themselves. The blocking movements of the
performance for example, formulates a space where the individual as part of the network of
safety is blocked from the tools of protocol and the complicit heteronormative society who
in following protocol equally police movement in networks of securitys perpetual visibility.
Where antidisciplinary protocol translates into the technology of movement, we should
understand movement always in relation to the open whole, that is the whole duration that

22
Micha Crdenas. Movements of Safety, A Safety Movement, Safety in Movement in
Plants, Androids and Operators. Edited by Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles. (Germany:
Mute Books, 2014) 122
23
Micha Crdenas. Mute. Accessed April 4, 2016.
24
Micha Crdenas. Plants, Androids and Operators. 121
25
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 35

Philip Trotter 33327830

it affects26 The networks of security are closed spaces that Jos Esteban Muoz looks to
call a straight present whereby he declares individual transports are insufficient. We need
to engage in a collective temporal distortion. We need to step out of the rigid
conceptualization that is a straight present.27 By utilizing the movement of performance
and dance within the same logics as the network of safety, Crdenas produces gestures as
queer communication, survival and self-making that in fact no longer necessarily need the
LAN in its technical capacity to always be effective. What Muoz tells us is the gesture
summons the resources of queer experience and collective identity that have been lost to us
because of the demand of official evidence and facts28 hence by Crdenas producing these
performances, she also produces these moments of queer that demand the best suited
form not necessarily the need for digital technological. What we see happening with the
physicality of Crdenas projects is the post-digital possibility, a post-digital choice: using
the technology most suitable to the job, rather than automatically defaulting to the latest
new media device.29 To consider the concrete application of safety is to understand the
human element can be more practical than the digital as a technology for dealing with the
issues of violence, just as controls dont make for a safe space, the network of safety can be
a post-digital futurity for the network model.
What we end up with would not be a node and network combination of the many and the
one, but rather an organization belonging to the many as such, which has no need
whatsoever of unity in order to form a system.30 Crdenas work gives us a view of the
networked world we live in as something that isnt truly safe but a state of security, not for
all but for a hierarchy of inhabitants to be protected, networks that defend themselves like
antibodies. But more importantly her work gives us a possibility to overturn this state of
affairs. These networks of security are able to be queered into a position of hope and
possibility with the placement of the network of safety for a community, group, town or
campaign. Where Galloway and Thacker call for a distribution of the network less in terms

26
Tiziana Terranova. Network Dynamics in Network Culture: Politics for the Information
Age. (London: Pluto Press, 2004) 52
27
Jos Esteban Muoz. Cruising Utopia. 185
28
Jos Esteban Muoz. Cruising Utopia. 72
29
Florian Cramer. What is Post-digital? APRJA. Edited by Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff
Cox and Georgios Papadopoulos. Volume 3, Issue 1. (2014) Accessed April 7, 2016
30
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 62

Philip Trotter 33327830

of the nodes and more in terms of the edgesor even in terms other than the entire, overly
spatialized dichotomy of nodes and edges altogether31; the network of safety we have
within Crdenas work calls not to a different representation of the network but a different
understanding of how nodes can belong, how spaces are simply those of other safety not
targets of violence, how edges are able to be the agreement to be safe in all aspects of life.

31
Alexander R Galloway and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit. 157

Philip Trotter 33327830

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Crdenas, Micha. Movements of Safety, A Safety Movement, Safety in Movement in
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http://www.aprja.net/?p=1318

Esteban Muoz, Jos. Cruising Utopia. (New York: New York University Press, 2009)

Philip Trotter 33327830

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