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The R.revistes exhibition
that took place in La Capella in Barcelona in the spring of 2003 received
13,000 visitors and served as a meeting point for all who dedicate their
efforts and dreams to making a go of these publishing projects.
The success of R.revistes was
encouragement enough to set in motion, in the same La Capella, R.punt,
a permanent spot for magazines, a quiet, reflective space in which to
consult, read, browse and review publications, and at the same time
a platform of action from which to carry out support and dissemination
activities aimed at the publishing sector catering for the most risky
cultural magazines.
Magazines constitute the most dynamic sector of the huge world of publishing.
Their speed of reaction to social and cultural events is equalled only
by their transience. The fact is, the ever-provisional state of things
is not only expressed in news, images and articles, but also in the
cultural magazines themselves that appear and disappear like shooting
stars in the night sky or leaves on a rippling stream. There is a constant
flow of information which often provides us with a glimpse of the raw
reality, live, prior to its being decanted and classified into an interpretation
which will always be the result of a distance in time more characteristic
of other publications.
International magazines on contemporary culture are not well known in
Catalonia. This fact is connected with the progressive uniformity of
the publishing sector and above all with the crisis in the magazine
distribution networks. La Capella’s proposal, R.punt however, aims
to show the variety and richness of the world’s magazines.
Self-publications, independent publications, commercial publishers and
institutional publications, cyber-magazines and paper publications all
live together now in an increasingly more undifferentiated world. But
the changes introduced by digital networks, the immediacy in time of
information transmission, the appearance and falling prices of new supports
such as the CD, CD-ROM and video oblige us to rethink the entire publishing
scenario. This is also one of the main aims of the proposal.
La Capella has opened this sort of "Newspaper Library of Babel"
where all kinds of magazines co-exist in fertile, merry disorder. A
rich, chaotic space in which to consult, browse, look and read.
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