canal*GITANO, 2005

Antoni Abad has done all the groundwork with each of these communities: he has made contact with them, initiated the project and organised regular consensual meetings, following the model of an editorial board. Although those recruited had similar profiles and constituted potential communities, they did not have any previous contact between them and, in most cases, did not regard themselves as a group. Portraits of the project participants were presented at MACBA in the exhibition Antoni Abad. megafone.net/2004–2014 (2014). Some of the exhibits in the exhibition are part of the MACBA Collection: sitio*TAXI, Mexico City, 2004/2013 (2004), Canal*GITANO, Lleida, 2005 (2005) and BARCELONA*accessible, Barcelona, 2006–2013 (2006).

Canal* GITANO, Lleida, 2005 was the second megafone.net experience: a project that gathered the views and experiences of twenty young Gypsies in public and private spaces in Lleida. Armed with mobile phones with integrated cameras, they became reporters on their own reality. Via multimedia messages (video, audio, photo and text) and telephone conversations, they coordinated the publication on the Internet, and in real time, of prearranged audiovisual channels. The fact that they were young people meant questioning the authority of the Gypsy patriarchs, who, according to ancient Romani tradition, are the only ones who can assume the role of chroniclers. Internal collective negotiations in this regard were very fruitful. After several months, the experience was repeated in the city of León.

Over the first ten years of the project, 254 people participated and generated 61,072 megafone.net posts or broadcasts, in a paradigmatic and repeatedly awarded case of interaction between art, the digital community and the social fabric ((www.megafone.net)).