A tour of Barcelona’s alternative culture of the last 50 years. It is the proposal of Fanzilona, ??a documentary series produced by CaixaForum with Krik Krak Productions that is inspired by underground publications called fanzines. Zosen Bandido, Miquel Ardèvol and Eric de Gispert sign this eight-episode production (the first six are already available on the platform and the remaining two will premiere in December) that portrays the artistic creation furthest from the conventional circuits since the end of the years seventies to the present.
Presented this week at the Serielizados Fest, Fanzilona travels chronologically through these five decades and addresses topics as diverse as fanzine culture, underground comics, fanzines, graffiti, skate culture, punk, urban music or club culture. And it does so through images from each era and the protagonists of the different alternative scenes of the city who relate their experiences in the first person such as Javier Mariscal, Sergio Caballero, Francesc Punsola (Frank from Trepax), Boliche, Stigmata, Alicia Verdú , Txarly Brown, Paco Gabas (Panko) or DJ Zero or Tomás Garcia (Inupie), among many others.
The development of the project began in 2018, when the idea arose to bring the Carcelona fanzine to the audiovisual field, created by Zosen Bandido, one of the most powerful brands in Barcelona in terms of urban art and skate culture. The objective was to bring together the various protagonists of different scenes that have been taking place in Barcelona and compile all their work in one place.
“All of those we have interviewed were pioneers in their field,” Zosen Bandido highlights to La Vanguardia. “This series is a tribute to all those who spent a long time preaching in the desert,” he adds. The objective when facing this project? What he would have liked as a user: “To find all this historical material together so I could consume it and learn.”
The artist born in Buenos Aires in 1978 is satisfied with having brought together in Fanzilona “so many themes that interested me” as well as “recovering all those protagonists whom the majority of ordinary citizens do not know.” They have been his sources of inspiration when it comes to listening to music, skateboarding or painting graffiti. “It’s a bit of a thank you to all those people who gave me knowledge and opened paths. “Many of them ignore the impact they have had.”
Fanzilona started at the end of the seventies, when the city and the country experienced the end of the Franco regime. “At that moment everyone wanted to do what could not be done in 40 years of darkness,” continues Zosen Bandido. In his opinion, underground culture in Barcelona “was more radical, non-conformist and disruptive because we were behind and ignorant of what was happening at the same time in other countries.”
The artist sees a big difference in the way underground culture is experienced after the appearance of the internet. He even wonders if alternative scenes could have existed with the Internet already in our lives. “The magic that underground culture had is that it was cult and almost inaccessible, but today the creators of the new generations can upload their content to platforms and social networks with a single click.”
“Young creators still have to fight but they have much easier access to the industry and can even be their own managers,” he says. But they also have a new difficulty: “They have to stay active because if not, others will come.” Furthermore, the way of consuming has changed. “Before, we consumed music, fanzines or magazines for years but now what was yesterday is already old today. The new generations peck, but they do not go deeper,” he concludes.
