sitio*TAXI, 2004-2005/2014
Since 2004, the project of Antoni Abad megafone.net has been inviting socially vulnerable groups of people, those often ignored by the official media, to express their opinions and share their experiences. Using mobile phones, the different groups record and immediately publish online audio and video messages, texts and photos. These have included taxi drivers in Mexico City (2004), young Gypsies in Lleida and León (2005), prostitutes in Madrid (2005), Nicaraguan immigrants in San José, Costa Rica (2006), motorcycle messengers or motoboys in São Paulo (2007), displaced people in Colombia (2009), young people in Saharan refugee camps near Tindouf in Algiers (2009) and Latino and Asian immigrants in the Borough of Queens in New York (2011).
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).
The first project, sitio*TAXI, Mexico City, 2004/2013, was initiated in 2004 with Mexico City taxi drivers. Seventeen drivers used mobile phones with integrated cameras – unusual for the time – to become chroniclers of their immediate reality. As they passed through public and private spaces, they published on the Internet their experiences and opinions in multimedia messages. At regular intervals, and in face-to-face meetings, they analysed the evolution of the channels and decided on the objectives and strategies of the project. Those receiving the broadcasts could also intervene, making them active participants in this digital community.
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 ().
Technical details
- Original title:
- sitio*TAXI
- Registration number:
- 5008
- Artist:
- Abad, Antoni
- Date created:
- 2004-2005/2014
- Date acquired:
- 2012
- Fonds:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium
- Object type:
- Media installation
- Media:
- Inkjet print on paper on aluminium and tactile screen
- Dimensions:
- 17 prints: 140 x 100 x 2 cm each; 1 touch screen: 30 x 55 x 45 cm
- Credits:
- MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium. Long-term loan of the artist
- Copyright:
- © Antoni Abad, VEGAP, Barcelona
- It has accessibility resources:
- No
The MACBA Collection features Catalan, Spanish and international art and, although it includes works from the 1920s onwards, its primary focus is on the period between the 1960s and the present.
For more information on the work or the artist, please consult MACBA's Library. To request a loan of the work, please write to colleccio [at] macba.cat.
If you need a high resolution image of the work, you must submit an image loan request.
