The Finestres-Elisava Chair is presented at ‘Comic Barcelona’ with an exhibition on graphic heritage and counterculture
The Research and Experimentation Chair in Comic Finestres-Elisava (CREC) was publicly presented as part of ‘Comic Barcelona’, one of the leading international events dedicated to comics, illustration, and graphic culture. The Chair’s participation included two activities that reflect its commitment to fostering research, preserving graphic heritage, and exploring new forms of contemporary creation linked to comics.
On the one hand, the official presentation of the new Chair took place under the title “Comics, academic research and much more”, featuring Mery Cuesta and Marta Cartu. The session served to share the Chair’s lines of work and open a conversation around the potential of comics as a critical, cultural, and academic research tool.
On the other hand, the Chair inaugurated the exhibition Atraccions 1982–1984: Punk, poetry and self-publishing, a showcase of some of the first outcomes developed by researchers of the TRAD grant, promoted by CREC to recover and highlight the value of Catalan comic heritage. The exhibition has been curated by Anna Llopis and David Caños, recipients of the grant.
Atraccions was a fanzine published in Barcelona between 1982 and 1984 by Guillem Cifré and Xavi Cot (Cuc Sonat), conceived as a free and horizontal space for artistic expression. Distributed free of charge in bars and music shops in the Gràcia neighbourhood and funded through advertising from those same venues, the project embraced self-publishing, graphic experimentation, and cultural self-management.
Each of its fifteen issues was handcrafted, incorporating spontaneous contributions from collaborators and reused printing materials, making each copy unique. Combining poetry, illustration, humor, and cultural critique, the fanzine captured the countercultural and punk spirit of 1980s Barcelona, bringing together both well-known and anonymous creators.
The exhibition revisits this graphic archive from a contemporary perspective, highlighting independent creative practices as a fundamental part of the visual and cultural memory of the territory.
