Julián Álvarez (León, 1950) holds a degree in Film Direction and Production from the London Film Academy (1974), studied Cinematography at the Escola d'Estudis Artístics in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, 1975-77), and video/TV at the Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático in Barcelona (CIPLA 1978-80). He has lived in Barcelona since 1975 and has been an active participant and key figure in the spirit of modernity of that cosmopolitan and video-activated Barcelona of the iconic 1980s and 1990s through audiovisual teaching, experimentation, and videographic creation. He is one of the pioneers of video art in Spain, and his extensive video filmography, marked by experimental heterodoxy, remains peripheral in the art circuits.

Iconoclastic and alien to any label, trend, or group affiliation, Julián Álvarez defines himself as an author who moves from one medium to another, across multiple languages, without disciplinary or institutional constraints, driven by experimental curiosity and an ironic attitude that allows him to distance himself from prevailing audiovisual trends. He acknowledges a certain degree of eccentricity in his productions and rejects the label of artist, emphasizing his role as an author, for whom the process of creation and the experience with the camera as an "organic extension of the body" are as important as the visual product the viewer ultimately receives. His work, full of visual and conceptual paradoxes, combines technical and formal experiments – almost self-referential – which hark back to the period of historical avant-garde movements, with visual poems of singular emotional intensity; (false) documentary with narrative fiction; references to film history with ironic deconstruction of its myths. This is how his work seeks to: "blur borders, contaminate identities, and above all: question certainties."

Álvarez's technical experimentation would materialize, in the early 1990s, in the invention and production of the FishCam prototype, an autonomous recording system for mobile support of a mini-camera attached to a telescopic pole, conceived, designed, and patented by Julián Álvarez. This recording system becomes an optical extension, a telescopic eye that enhances the operator's capabilities. The technical-formal aspects present in his work "generally have a professional appearance, but the spirit that originally motivated them is experimental and amateur. Experimental because it follows the primary impulse to learn from experience [experiment] and amateur because it is designed primarily to please oneself. They are, therefore, primal experiences or, in other words, egocentric."

Against the unidirectionality of interpretation that audiovisuals mostly propose, Álvarez seeks to awaken a multiplicity of impressions. Against the rational logic that moves images forward through the traditional mechanism of cause and effect, the author pursues plastic and rhythmic associations and their integration with other graphic elements. And above all, the fascination with the presence of the camera, a camera that becomes an appendage of the arm, the body, the filmmaker's view, extending beyond them all to stay close to what it pursues. It turns to reach all corners, pulses, vibrates, shows its curiosity, and demonstrates how, stripped of its narrative links and the simplistic tyrannies of the industry, it can construct through play; it can turn an audiovisual product into a joyful game, where each viewer finds their own logic to appropriate the piece.

Author-producer of more than 60 works of creation and experimentation in video, film, and multimedia formats, he also organizes and conducts seminars, workshops, and lectures on cinema, video, photography, TV, and advertising in academic and cultural spaces (1976-82). He has been the promoter and organizer of the Muestra de Videos Realizados en Barcelona (1983-1986) on art, music, and reality; organizer and curator of the Muestra de Videos Brasileños (1985), Muestra de Videos Italianos (1986), among others; directs the First World Handheld Camera Contest and the exhibit From Cinema-Eye to Video-I (La Caixa, 1987); premieres the multimedia performance El Ring at the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona (1988); presents Boxiana at the La Pedrera Art Gallery (Barcelona, 1988), an exhibition about boxing that includes videos, installations, and paintings; presents Macedonia de frutas Cirsa at the Apolo nightclub (Barcelona, 1990), which combines a concert of the same name with the performance Operación fimosis, based on the sound of slot machines. He received the National Videography Award from the Generalitat of Catalonia (1991), along with other state and international awards. In terms of recognition, he has received more than thirty national and international awards.