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Interview with Antoni Abad
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The first time that Antoni Abad gave out mobile phones with built-in camera was to taxi drivers in Mexico City two years ago. Last year he repeated the exercise with Gypsies in Lleida and León, and with prostitutes in Madrid. On sitio*TAXI, canal*GITANO and canal*INVISIBLE each of these groups has used the mobiles to send images and comments to a website (www.zexe.net) on which they themselves create thematic channels according to their interests on the basis of communal decisions.
canal*ACCESSIBLE is the project that Antoni Abad has developed for the CASM. On this occasion he gave the little gadgets to physically handicapped people who are putting up their own channels on the Internet to draw attention to the urban obstacles and deficiencies they are faced with in Barcelona. This whole process is documented and exhibited in the CASM, where the weekly meetings of the transmitters also take place.
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DAVID G. TORRES
What does canal*ACCESSIBLE consist of?
It’s almost four years now since I first saw a mobile with a built-in camera. I discovered that they could be used to capture photographs, sound and video and simultaneously publish them in real time on the Internet. They can minimize the distance between an idea and its publication, in a very economical way. And it struck me that they had the potential to be used for something more that just sending images of birthday parties.
canal*ACCESSIBLE is related to a series of projects that I’ve done with mobile phones with built-in camera and I think it goes beyond the previous ventures. A sitio*TAXI, canal*GITANO and canal*ACCESSIBLE, the taxi drivers, the Gypsies and the prostitutes told us who they were and what they wanted. They organized the thematic channels on the Net that they had decided on at their weekly editorial meetings. These groups are not used to having a voice and at first they didn’t really know what to say. But gradually, explaining to us their day-to-day lives, they found the thread of their discourse and ended up telling us who they are and what they want.
In what way does canal*ACCESSIBLE go further?
canal*ACCESSIBLE amplifies the opinions of a group of physically handicapped people in the city of Barcelona. The transmitters photograph and post on the Internet every obstacle they find in their neighbourhood, so that they are not only indicating who they are and what they want but are also, in a very literal way, showing us exactly where each problem is.
The hidden city
Is the intention to draw up a map of the city with all of the inaccessible places?
That’s one of the objectives. The others will be decided by the transmitters as the project progresses.
Will it be a map of the inaccessible Barcelona?
At the Centre d’Art La Panera in Lleida we gave a map of the city to the young Gypsies transmitters so that they could mark on it the places they frequented, and we discovered that there are lots of places in the city where the Gypsies never go. Although for reasons of time it was not possible to exhibit the resulting mapin Lleida, we did show the Gypsy map of León in the MUSAC, with the rest of the city blanked out, without all of what they had not marked as places they habitually went to: we presented the Gypsy León. We’ll see how the Barcelona case evolves. However it goes, the editorial team behind canal*ACCESSIBLE want to present, at the end of the experience, the map of the inaccessible Barcelona. Let’s see what it looks like.
But perhaps it will be the whole city?
In fact, at a previous meeting one of the transmitters predicted that the map of Barcelona would end up covered in the red dots with which the mechanism marks each of the posted obstacles. The initial premise consisted simply of marking the places in the city where people with disabilities can’t get past. And they have started to mark lots of shops, banks and offices they cannot get into. I hadn’t considered that, I thought they were only referring to the street. But of course there are many more inaccessible spaces than those that are the responsibility of the city council or public transport. |
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| Antoni Abad. canal*ACCESSIBLE, 2005 |
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They expose the mistakes, the things that don’t work, not only in the public sphere, but also in the private.
The fact is that shops, offices or cash dispensers are very much part of the public space to which we all have the right of access. The project makes an initial proposal which is now in the hands of the transmitters and, in consequence, takes the orientation that the transmitters decide at their regular meetings. The other day Khaled proposed also posting the examples of good accessibility. The assembly of transmitters approved the proposal, so a new information channel will be set up to do this at www.zexe.net, the website of the project.
A democratic process...
Having conceived and set up the project, my role becomes that of a moderator.
A very simple thing, giving mobiles with cameras to people with disabilities, suddenly puts a whole heap of problems on the table.
It seems right to me that the people who are actually affected who should express their problems. The authorities have to learn to listen to the people.
Follow-up
And what is there at the CASM?
It’s very simple. A short text explaining the project, photographs of the transmitters and a meeting table with computers where visitors to the art centre art can also check up on the evolution of the project.
And do you have to carry out an intensive follow-up of the entire project?
Precisely, I keep track of it every day. I have gone from being an artist who spends the day in front of the computer to spending hours and hours in the street with people whom otherwise I would perhaps never have met.
Once the collaboration with the institution is concluded, does each of the projects continue?
After the temporary hospitality afforded by the art institution and the effort involved in organizing a group of transmitters (50 in the case of Barcelona), the greatest success of the project would be the fact that these groups, now provided with multimedia mobiles, organize themselves in order to give continuity to a mechanism of communication whose workings they now understand. I have carried out this the experience four times now, and only the taxi drivers in Mexico City wanted to continue. However, the sponsor needed to get their mobile phones back. In spite of this the taxi drivers set up an association from which to air their grievances. I think that the whole thing had effective results from the moment when they made the effort to organize themselves. Maybe some day they will go back to transmitting again. The Gypsies of Lleida and León, and the prostitutes in Madrid considered the experience as completed.
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Amplifier
Does the fact of not continuing constitute a failure?
Don Facundo, who was one of the taxi-driver transmitters in Mexico City and one of those most involved in the project, said to me one day: ‘After twenty years sitting in the taxi twelve hours a day in the infernal traffic of this huge and chaotic city, this project has reminded me that the imagination exists.’ I think that remark means it was a success. But the best outcome would be independent continuity, outside of the artistic umbrella that made these channels of communication possible.
In the light of this there is no need to talk of success or failure.
One of the questions that some of the transmitters with disabilities asked me during the first few days was whether canal*ACCESSIBLE was meant to achieve anything. There are no more revolutions now, but I like to think that there is the possibility of changing the way that certain groups are perceived. No doubt the barriers that confront them every day will not disappear overnight, but there may still be a change of sensibility in the people who visit the channel on the Internet or at the CASM. Whatever else happens we will have the chance to find out if this city is as well adapted to the needs of the physically handicapped as it says it is. And we will know this without filters, and on the basis of the actual experience of the transmitter group.
For a start they are the protagonists of a project in an art centre and not an exhibition of paintings by people with disabilities.
This is an event that takes place during a certain time from the street and on the Internet, and turns the art centre into a meeting place. The space of the centre fulfils two functions: it serves as a place for the editorial teams to meet and at the same time it lets the visitors see what is going on. It follows a dual logic, functional and pedagogical.
Have you gone from being a technological artist to being a social artist?
I really don’t agree with the fact that artists should be privileged interpreters who are authorized to comment on their society. I think that a lot of these individuals authorized by the institutions, the curators, the galleries or the press, don’t make very good use of this privilege. I find it a challenge that groups regarded as alien to the scene should appropriate the space of art.
You give other people the tools so that they can speak.
Yes, of course, but I often ask myself what it is that I do as an artist. Evidently, the authorship is displaced in these experiences. It is the participants themselves who publish whatever content they consider appropriate to their aims. As an artist, my work consists in creating mechanisms of mobile audio-visual communication on the Internet so that groups without an active presence in the communications media can express themselves with total freedom. |
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