What if off-grid communication were not the last resort, but the first choice? What if it could circulate as effortlessly as an everyday accessory? 868labs presents a series of open-source wearable devices built on the LoRa radio protocol, enabling encrypted peer-to-peer messaging without the global internet, SIM cards, cellular networks, or cloud platforms for distances up to dozens of kilometres.
Developed in response to expanding censorship, surveillance, and the erosion of digital autonomy, 868wearables functions both as a tool of infrastructural resistance and as a speculative artefact. It asks what changes when communication returns to place and body, when connectivity is no longer perceived as a service, but practised as a local network sustained by proximity, shared maintenance, and collective presence.
On view in the exhibition "From the Ashes of the Burnout Machines" at Galerie MAERZ.
In conversation: 868wearables: Speculative Infrastructures for Decentralized Resistance
