Culture-jamming
 

Let’s discuss culture-jamming – the practice of using mass media as a tool against itself. It is a form of activism which most consider to be the antithesis of commercialism.

The Who’s The Who Sell Out is considered an early venture in culture-jamming. Other bands like Negativland, and the Gorillaz are some of the more recent music groups to engage in culture-jamming.

In print, publications like Ad-busters – a magazine which publishes without advertising but prints altered print ads, and Naomi Klein’s book No Logo bring the message of culture jamming to light.

Some have even argued that Borat is/was an exercise in culture-jamming.

Personally, I enjoy it. I like the idea of ordinary people going up against large conglomerates by defacing their advertising and altering their messages. I’ve never engaged in it myself, but I could imagine that if the opportunity presented itself, I probably would.

Have you ever engaged in culture-jamming? If you did, what did you do? If you haven’t, would you?

Excellent topic. I, too, love culture-jamming. It's radicalism against what some consider oppressive institutions, such as corporations and so forth.

I'm a Human Rights/Civil Rights activist myself, and am completely turned-off by the disgusting notion of "pop. culture" which is directed by commercialism, political agenda, and so forth.

Culture-jamming, I do it in my own way, part of my cynical aspect of my sense of humor. Using religious dogma in my everyday sarcasm, and using corporate mottos for profanity lol.

"'I had my break today' and gained like 5lbs" to "Did you Just Do It and break your leg? Maybe you should have Just Thought About It first"

lol. Ironically, I'm a business major with a concentration in Marketing Management. Marketers and advertisers, ourselves, have actually caught on to culture-jamming after the success of groups like the Gorillaz, Rage Aginst the Machine, Truth, Negativland, and so forth.

We call it "Anti-Marketing" or "Ugly Marketing". Marketing that isn't the gimic-y and expensive pretty designs that older people are impressed. Instead, using the cynicism, radicalism, choatic and "un-pretty" styles that modern teens and young adults are attracted to, for our advertising and Brand management designs.

MySpace.com, is mentionably something we consider anti-marketing. Allowing our young users to do whatever the Hell they want to do to their pages to keep them active and interested on MySpace.com, while marketers and programmers collect information on them and their computers to use to generate advertising, sales leads, and strong market research for corporations.

Which is the ironic twist. I have a saying, "beware the investor, because you have no idea how he invests, and what he invests in...could be the very ass you sit on."

Myspace.com is the corporate adaptation of culture-jamming for profit. There are still Big Brother groups that do get on the nerves of the institutions they are after by using culture-jamming. Truth.com is a popular example.

I've read and enjoyed Kalle Lasn's "Culture Jam", I own a stack of Adbusters magazines and various other publications under the Adbusters banner. I even took part in Buy Nothing Day for a few years.

But I no longer subscribe to their publications nor to their ways of thinking.

The ideas of fighting against corporate ownership of everything, public access to television/radio networks, protecting our minds from 24/7 advert brainwashing...all of these are important topics but there really is but so much that you can say about these issues without acquiring a sort of Us Vs. Them attitude.

My breaking point came shortly after Adbusters released an issue of their magazine that was comprised solely of first person accounts of daily life after the the collapse of the stock market. Every character romanticized the death of money, tedious jobs, drug laws, worldwide communication...

It's one thing to fight for change and another entirely to alienate everyone you'd hope to convert by getting so caught up in your ideas that your message comes across as nothing but a convoluted and pompous mess.

I defaced trains, buses and MTA adverts for years and eventually I came to the conclusion that while I liked the idea of reclaiming public spaces back from major corporations - there are much better ways to go about it. And you aren't exactly raging against the machine by defacing adverts with paint that was manufactured by another major corporation.

Like this?
http://www.abrupt.org/CJ/smack.gif

I comprehend the words, but I'm not sure I quite grasp the concept. Is it the selling out that you're speaking of, or when the media becomes the news? Or am I lost in space? :p

I wonder if this is anything like what the lower ranks of the military do by integrating pop culture and policy together into goofy, bitter sarcasm?

Biggest and most popular example.

Other examples are "Army of nOne" and the "Kilroy was here!" thing from WW2.

I'm with you. I'm not sure what culture jamming is exactly.

This is a good example of culture jamming:

http://michaelgreenwell.files.wordpr.../09/jam001.jpg

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a13...Resistance.jpg

Turns out the intarblog is chock full of nutty Photoshopped "culture jamming" examples.

Ah, but crompsin, photoshopping is not culture-jamming. Someone needs to tell those poor, suburban, pasty-skinned, misguided misanthropes to get out there with a can of spray paint and actually do it.

Oh, but going to jail for vandalism because you were "fighting the man" is a bad idea.

I know what you mean by Photoshopping not counting. I'm search-lazy tonight.

I've never culture-jammed overtly, but I do it in my head all fucking day long.

Anybody know how I can get it to stop? :lol:

http://i252.photobucket.com/albums/h...edited-1-1.jpg

Fighting the good fight against gentrification.

This is why we deserve to live under the oppression of the corporate state. :p

Excuse me? Have you been to jail? The soap is absolutely horrible on my dry skin.

You are all culture jamming my thread.

Except manic_skafe. He gets it.

Do people really take this seriously?

I can't imagine anyone over 25 doing something like this.

I'm sure the sign industry thanks you for your support.

Screw you, Dad! You never let me do what I want! I need to express myself!

*slams bedroom door plastered with Coal Chamber and Tupac posters*

Crompsin wins the thread with "Skippy". Y'all should follow his links. :)

Damn, I wish I got it. I've read this thread like 3 times, and I'm still not sure I "get it."

Join the club.

Oh, come on. It isn't that hard to understand.

You take a corporate symbol and modify it to express the opposite.

Sony makes TVs. TVs kinda enslave everybody. Use that angle.

McDonalds makes "food." Food that makes people fat. Use that angle.

This is about using graffiti to stick it to the man with his own symbols.

My anti-consumerism is evident in my actions. I won't wear anyone's name plastered across my chest, on my ass or shoes. Wouldn't that be the ultimate pop culture buster?

By defacing ads that are paid for, what's accomplished? More publicity for what you're proclaiming to be against? Maybe I'm missing something.

détournement.
it's more than reworking adverts.
it's a way of life.

look it up--that way you have to find out about the situationist international.
i'd help, but it's monkey reset time and i gotta go.

I did read quite a bit after the first post.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvertising

Although I can understand it from an artistic viewpoint, I guess I don't get it as "jamming" since it gives "those symbols undue publicity".

The intent is to take those symbols and utilize their power (which lies is making subliminal their true message) and force those that watch their commercials and view their adverts to actually consider not only what they're being sold but what sort of effect all of these messages have impressed upon them.

While these "culture jammers" are often too concerned with "freeing minds" from "corporate slavery" - I think it's important, especially in these times, for people and especially children to realize the true intent and meaning of all these messages that are forced upon us.

http://www.satyamag.com/sat.site.images/adbusters1.jpg

My personal form of culture jamming is that I ignore the crap I don't want or like. The rest of it seems like a silly game and useless except to get a laugh from your other culture jamming buddies.

I think this is true to some extent. Those people who are most likely to have a favorable reaction to culture-jamming would be those who are already aware and in favor of it. For others, they either don't believe they are susceptible to messages or they don't care and see fighting it to be a waste of time.

But in saying that, I don't to leave the impression that I don't think culture-jamming is worthwhile and valuable. Like I said, I do it all the time in my own little world and I'm one of the most cynical anti-marketing, anti-consumerism bitches you'll ever meet. :)

I read an article about a culture jammer who printed up a bunch of Wikipedia "Citation Needed" stickers for use on advertising. For example:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/6...878468cdf6.jpg

So can culture-jamming be considered a form of sub-culture in itself? While I get what they're doing, and in some of the more creative versions find it amusing, it reminds me of people who dress "goth" to be different from everyone else. They're different from everyone else, except the people who are just like them.

Perhaps I don't get what they're doing as much as I think I do.

We had a course in school which taught about planned obsolescence, the media, marketing and advertising that was required in order to graduate high school. As parents, isn't it our job to pass this along to our kids?

For those of you that are into culture jamming, I truly want to understand how and why you think it's effective. The Sony pic that JJ posted (#7), for example. "There's nothing good on TV." Cute. Clever. Funny. But do you really think that anyone's not going to buy a Sony or not watch TV because of that?

Seems rather stupid. I always get chafed at the idea that I'm thought of as some corporate slave. It's an insult to my intelligence for somebody to assume that I'm buying any product based on a billboard or some corporate logo.

I wish I could form my thoughts as well as Miss Media does..

I believe that this term, and subsequently action, 'culture- jamming' can,
and will be as varied, subtle,or down your throat 'not so subtle'

as the advertisements themselves are. Sometimes my humor is so dry I end
up taking myself seriously...

It can be effective in the short term to help people to question what they are seeing...and I believe it can take something quite shocking to garner
some peoples attention than others...

I have a headache now..from thinking....'Apply Directly To The Forehead'
indeed.

I'm happy I said I was lost. Thanks to everyone who has explained. As it turns out, I have "culture jammed" a number of times, usually in the car, some radio ad will be "heard" and the jamming begins.

I think it does have it's place, but (as already stated) it's among those who already don't agree with the way corporate business, marketing, and media go about their business.

I'd have to say that you were pretty lucky. In my schools I remember seeing signs that reminded us to buy pop from one of the machines or at lunch. And, yes, it is the parents job, but only if they are aware of it in the first place.

This, I would say, is just how it happens. The first group of Goths were truly trying to be "not like everyone else." But like every good idea, it gets borrowed, added to, taken away from, and made into a other market the corporate business use to make money. However, I can't see them "making fun of themselves" for a few extra sells - and because of that culture jamming might not be able to make it's way into a mainstreamed sub-culture. If we're lucky, it's stay a normal old sub-culture and continue to make people stop and think.

That image just blow me away. And because of that, I think it would help people see what these ads are really selling us. So again, I'd have to agree with the point of culture jamming. And I'll also have to take some more time and look at the different "hows" of it.

Thanks for starting the OP. I love it when I learn cool shit without trying.

Perhaps you don't, but there are many people out there that this works on. No matter what the level of advertisement at some point in your life it's going to have an effect on your purchasing decision. It may be that when you see a BMW M series you quietly think to yourself "Ultimate Driving Machine", it might be something less intuitive like not buying an iPod because you associate them with elitist snobs, an idea reaffirmed by their advertising but not outright in spoken word. I myself have gone out of my way to order parts from certain Ford dealerships because they advertise on & support the SCCOA. So while you may not be a corporate slave I'm fairly certain that at some point in time advertising/name recognition/logo's have effected your purchasing.

*edit* Remember boys & girls to proof read :smacks forehead:

The best way for me to NOT buy something is to over advertise it, but I know I'm not immune, really no one is, thats why the adds work.

For me the issue is, so what? We live in a time of insane prosperity by any past standards. I recall reading that an 'average' middle class lifestyle today would have required 125 slaves to maintain in ancient Rome. How they came to this figure I do not recall but its an interesting thought that for all our whining, even the poor are fat, healthier (despite their greater problems), and better educated than almost anyone up until this century. A big part of that are these corporations which people like to malign, but they have done FAR more good for people than harm. Its a system that overwhelmingly works.

So I'll raise my glass of Miller Lite, while watching the Superbowl on my Sony HD TV, and give thanks to the corporations that made it possible. They don't have to love me, they don't do it to be nice to me, but it all works out in the end.

I think there are two levels of culture-jamming. There's the serious, and there's the just for fun. I prefer the second, as I doubt the first will ever have any effect.

For some great examples of the second version, try Improv Everywhere (they were just in the news for No Pants 2K8), as well as the audio-only Free Speech For Sale (part of the Snuggles collective, inspired by Negativland).

I don't know. That seems like one level to me, because depending on who's looking at it that "serious" piece of culture jamming looks like a joke, and how often are "jokes" taken seriously.

So there may be are two level in production, but that would be very limiting in perception.

I am short on time now so I can't spend time on this but I will say that Culture Jammers, like most counter cultural efforts to bring down "consumer culture" miss their mark completely. I believe they fundamentally don't understand how capitalism and pop culture works.

Capitalism thrives on alternative culture, coolness and rebelliousness.

If you truly want to bring down capitalism, the key is to radically conform.
Buy nothing? feh. Earn nothing. This will truly bring down the "system".

I have to wonder if any of them ever ask why they want to bring it down and what it can be replaced with thats better.

Stupid kids.

I find their most of their anti-advertising tactics to be effective simply because they're mostly centered upon forcing people to consciously consider what they're spending their money on and what those choices perpetuate.

The typical jammer argument is that far too many major corporations are yearly spending billions on adverts with the hopes of buying up all of the real estate in our minds. Essentially, planting seeds with their slogans, catch-phrases and brand names. And every few years we slip from one demographic into another.

"According to the book Fast Food Nation (2001), 96% of school children in the United States can identify Ronald McDonald, making him the United States' most recognized fast food advertising icon. Only Santa Claus was more commonly recognized..."

If the words "Skinny ≠ Beautiful" scrawled on a poster can cause a teenage girl to seriously consider why none of the teen models in her issue of J-14 resemble most of the girls she knows then I find it to be pretty damn effective.

Dropping out of "the system" by earning less is essentially a major step in culture jamming but it is far from the final frontier. The ideas that are stressed the most are lessening our global footprint as a species, taking care of our bodies and minds, spending less time at work and more time doing what we love and being with whom we love - these are all universal themes that almost anyone can identify with.

And they're also far from original.

Some people spend their entire lives never thinking about things beyond the superficial. Some people spend their lives as part of the machine never realizing they're nothing more than a cog. I once heard these people described as walnuts in the batter of eternity. Others think that things are worth changing and are actually willing to take the step to do something. It may be misguided, it may even be futile, but in the end, at least they can say they did something.

While I can completely appreciate where you are coming from with this, I just can help feeling that it sounds extremely condescending.

What does it mean when you suggest that, "Some people spend their lives as part of the machine never realizing they're nothing more than a cog?" What would you suggest is better than being a "cog" and what form would this take in daily life?

The reason that advertising works so well is its saturation and repetitive nature. We learn slogans and jingles because we're exposed to them to the point of near saturation. We have positive or negative attitudes towards products based upon how we react to a particular ad campaign. Think about how a bad news story or a particularly funny advertisement can affect a business. Remember the diet candies that came out in the late 70s? They were extremely popular for a few years, and then quite quickly were removed from the market because people refused to buy them.



Instances like the Sony photo I posted attempt to work in the same manner. Naturally, culture-jammers have neither the funds nor the exposure to get their message out to the extent that the marketers do, so they use what they can. However, if enough people get out and perform the same actions and enough billboards are altered in the same fashion, then the same message becomes ingrained. One billboard by 2 or 3 people won't be effective, just as one advertisement in one market won't be effective, this is why culture jamming takes a more organized approach in order for it to be effective.

It's about changing people's perceptions. If you don't remember, the name of the diet candy was AYDS.

http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1046/hermitiz5.jpg

The ultimate culture jammer.

Still, no one has answered exactly what the big deal is. You can deface signs, I can have nice thing while raising my great kids, with my culturally beautiful wife, helping hundreds of people at my job.

They defaced a sign, they did NOTHING, but annoy the signs owner and make the guy who makes replacement signs happy.

So lets see corporations bring me luxuries and services at affordable prices and cultural jammers give me graffiti .....

I'm still trying to get how ones a problem and ones a hero.

BTW I'd start by using a non-corporate created computer to post your response in a non-corporate infrastructured internet.

You know whats really ironic about this whole thing is I'm thinking about how I can make an affordable add campaign for my brand new corporation in order to let the community know about my services. I was thinking 'the swinging dentist' might not be a good start, but I'll work on it.

What I meant by it is that every human being has the potential to be the agent for great change, to leave the world in a better place than they left it, but that too many never realize their potential.

Corporations don't exist for the betterment of society. They exist to create wealth for themselves. That's fine. People who work for those corporations fool themselves if they believe they are working for the greater good. They're working to create wealth for the corporation. If at any moment they cease to create wealth for the corporation, they are let go. This is what I mean by calling them cogs in the machine. If that's their choice, then that's fine for them. It's not fine for me. I firmly believe that by subjugating their lives to the betterment of an entity that does not reciprocate, they are denying their ability to truly contribute their true worth to humanity.

My belief is that some people do this and feel helpless to change. Other people do this and do it happily. While still others never even give it a thought.

They defaced a sign and forced you to actually think about it.

What more could they ever hope to accomplish?

Need dental work?
http://www.theplucker.com/PStickmen.jpg
Us too

I sometimes wonder if you're replies are obtuse by design or accident. Why you labor under the idea that your failure to understand or approve of a concept makes it worthless makes discussion with you circular at best, which I suppose is why you stick mostly to one-liner replies.

You haven't said ANYTHING worthy of more.

Defacing signs is juvenile, pointless, if caught a really stupid thing to do, and I'm shocked that an adult would think it does anything but make them look juvenile.

Any half wit can spray paint a sign, some of the more creative ones can make it even amusing but it does absolutely nothing. Its not culture jamming, its counter culture bull that only seems meaningful if you already agree with whatever point they were trying to make.

I'm far more impressed with people who can take an idea for a company and make it into a multinational power house, creating 1000's of jobs, jobs that employ the parents of kids who think they are being radicals because they did something like this gem..

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/553/sfsc1.jpg

I can clearly see the concept behind it, but its execution and effectivness is laughable.

Its a Sisyphian task only unlike Sisyphus who was forced into pointless effort, people think they are somehow better than the 'cogs' because they expanded our minds and did something.

A single consumer reports website is worth more than every underemployed kid who thinks their destruction of private property is meaningful, just, and not just something to do while high.

Heck yeah! :lol: The reason they stopped selling is they tasted so good, you ate them all in one day, so they didn't work :lol:

I get your point and understand the movement's purpose. I just don't think it's effective. Defaced signs will be de-grafittied (?) or replaced before they'll have a chance to have had much impact. Too bad there's no way to sabotage TV ads and keep them running. :p

Anyway, thought this was good. Don't know that it'll deter anyone from using FedEx ...
http://www.woostercollective.com/200.../fedupwith.jpg

I don't know? Voting? Not going home to their mom's basement to play their $800 Playstation 3?

The big problem I have with the above statement is that a lot of us already think.

We already know Starbucks is overpriced yuppie goof-fuel.

"If you just paid $8 for a mediocre cookie-cutter latte... you just got Star-fucked!"

We already know The GAP consists of shoddy slave-labor clothes sold at 400% markup.

"The only Gap is the one in your wallet after you buy their shitty clothes."

We already know that catchy jingles are designed to get us to memorize product placement plots.

Despite the fact that I often think there should be a "life lottery" to rid the planet of at least 50% of the dumbasses walking it's surface... the other 50% are just as smart as anybody who reads at this forum. That half of the population knows and feels the same way you do.

It doesn't even take a genius. I'm definitely not one and I don't really cow-tow to any corporate marketing bullshit. I drive a cheap domestic vehicle based on technical stats, wear clothes that come from a god-damn grocery store, and eat generic cereal and canned tuna because it's cheap and healthier than the zillion dollars of fast food advertising that can't hide the fact that their slop will kill you from the inside in only a few years.

Turns out you're not a rebel just because you don't like the system.

...

Hah, it's funny how many "rebels" have a closet full of fancy name brand clothes.

So what stereotype does the graffiti artist or sign-defacer fall into?

Poor, urban, dark-skinned, misguided?

That should be the real target.

No, wait, that would be "terrorism."

I just wanted to say that of all the posts so far, I liked this quote a lot. It applies to so many people in my life (as well as myself, once upon a time)... lots of good intentions, still going to hell.

JJ, to be honest, the way you explain culture-jamming reminds me a bit of the futility of Fight Club's Project Mayhem. Lots of sturm und drang, but no real change.

If awareness of the message was enough... we would have seen change by now.

The way I see it, consumer culture loves and adores rebellion. In fact counterculture is what feeds the mainstream with new and cool ideas. Culture cannot be jammed.

A book you should read: The Rebel Sell

I plan on being "counter culture" by getting a decent paying job, paying off my debts, and living in moderation. I'm punk rock.

Yeah, as I read back over it, I realize that my explanations aren't the best.

Culture jamming isn't just altering billboards, even though it seems the majority of this thread seems to revolve around defining it as such. It's more involved than that. Culture jamming includes music, films, art, and many other creative outlets.

The Ramones were culture jammers, as were The Clash and just about every other punk band in existence in the late 70s.

Andy Warhol is viewed as a culture jammer.

Lenny Bruce was a culture jammer. Andy Kaufman was a culture jammer.

I bring up these names because of Charlatan's comment that culture cannot be jammed. I disagree. The fact that what was once considered fringe and obscene has become mainstream. That's exactly what culture jamming is. To say it's a failure because it's mainstream doesn't make sense to me. To me, that's proof that it's successful.

I hope that makes it a little more clear.

I added the bold part.

JJ, what you are describing is more counter culture than culture jamming per se. While they both can stem from the same origins they are ultimately two different things based on the part I have bolded in the quote above.

However, regardless of the intent, I still suggest that mass, consumer culture thrives on the inventiveness of counter culture. Counter culture is the farm team for the mainstream.

All of those who would envisage themselves as being counter culture in an effort to change "the system" (and the existence of a "system" is highly suspect to me) should have a long look at how consumer trends are created. There is a reason why punk is embraced by the mainstream these days and it is the same reason that haute couture eventually makes its way into JC Penny.

If you want to destroy consumer capitalism, the way to do it is to redically conform. Stop being a trendsetter. Stop being cool. Stop buying into the bleeding edge of culture. You are just feeding the cycle.

Your response was spot on with how I feel about "trendies."

Reminds me of that Cake song, "You Turn The Screws."

Excellent analogy, I'll be quoting this at some point claiming it as my own in conversation.

I don't think even this would work. Not being cool would be the new cool and looking not cool would be available for 50% off at Kohls.

When I suggest you should radically conform, I am thinking worst distopian vision... all of us in the same coverall, wearing the same brand of boot.

There would be no difference in apparel. There would be no fashion. There would be no novelty.

This is a highly impractical solution.

I just wanted to add... that despite my feelings about the effectiveness about Culture Jamming... I find that it makes for great art.

I love the play with cultural icons. I like how meaning can be cleverly changed. Some of the things I have seen are put art. Some are just clever.

My issue is simply that I don't think culture can be jammed.

interesting thread.

personally, i am of two minds about this....

i'm not sure that warhol is a good example of culture jamming. the jokes involved with the nature of his work are too inside, the repetition too close to repetition. but you can look at it as a demonstrating *the* problem with the tactic, which charlatan and--gasp--ustwo have pointed out: well two of them:

(a) warhol's series can be seen as a parody of commodity series, of mass produced images, but that are commodities in the sense that they were themselves mass produced images. that's the whole idea of the factory. most of his techniques derive from his background as a commercial painter. they *are* what they are making fun of.

(b) lots of advertising relies on the mocking of advertising to advertise itself as a way of advertising its product.

on the other hand, i like detournement and think that more people should do it more often.

the situationists used this tactic to great effect--they were a huge influence on the way in which the mai 68 in paris unfolded, it's politics and its look. they are the archetype hovering behind the tactic--given the proper situation (sorry) these meta-objects can be of a piece with generating the space to think and act radically differently within a commodity-dominated context.

absent that situation, though, détournement (culture jamming) is probably best understood as the wiki thing says--ephemeral protest actions directed against a commodity spectacle that effectively colonizes even your dreams. think about it: much dream material comes from perceptual data that you filter out, that you in a sense register but which your ability to focus visually shunts to the side---how this works only is paradoxical or curious if you really believe that perception is skullbound (it isn't)...so dreaming is recycling is the generation of "unauthorized" combinations is détournement.

so your unconscious lives are commodity fields.
your fantasies are commodity fields.
your thinking then is repetition.
taken to a limit, it follows that thinking is not thinking at all.

is that accurate?
depends (tm)

will détournement free you?
probably not.

does that mean it is a waste of time?
why would that follow?
nothing to be done, just accept it, you are the colonized, you dream as you are told, nearly.
or little to be done, you are the colonized, but the fact that your dreaming generates gaps or holes in the commodity field makes of dreaming a little space of autonomy.

people get blasé about the cultural environments they move through--if that environment is characterized by saturations of certain types of imagery, then that imagery becomes like wallpaper and who fights wallpaper?
people also confuse aging with accomodation with acquiescence with wisdom.
people think alot of goofy things.

maybe there are no general statements to be made about whether jamming is or is not "effective" because the point of it is in the doing and not in the reception.
maybe looking for someone else to help bump you out of the world of dancing signifiers that move across the giant simulacrum is not much different from not looking for someone else to help bump out out of the world of dancing signifiers that move across the giant simulacrum.

maybe asking "does it work" on spectators is missing the point entirely.

Thanks, as always, for the new spin, RB.

I borrowed this book from my daughter's boyfriend and actually look forward to reading it now.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...4L._SS500_.jpg

o wait--i get this clever point: the book is a commodity so it can't possibly critique commodity culture!
wow ustwo!
you're the first EVER to notice this one!
amazing!
a genius!
what's the point of even THINKING in oppositional terms when we are up against Insights that?
it never occurred to ANYONE who writes and publishes critical work that their books and articles are ALSO commodities!

cheese louise: what were we all thinking?


be careful diving about in the shallow end of the pool, comrade: you might hurt yourself.
it's better to dive into deeper water.
just a safety tip.
because i care so much, i give and give and give.

I think if you filtered out the snarky you might learn something in your own posting.

I don't see it as much different than "smart" vandalism. I believe that the jammers are just as egotistical as the rest of the machine.

If the culture moves more internet, is "culture jamming" DDOS attacks to advertising servers? hacks to photos replacing them with snarky comments under their logos?

at what point does it cross the line from brand comparison which is fair to brand destruction which is unfair?

well, in some ways it isn't.
obviously, anyone's position on this is not free-standing--it is of a piece with broader political and aesthetic positions. if you are politically inclined to find strategies of branding to be hunky dory, then you probably won't be doing this kind of action in any event. the questions that follow from this statement in your post all lean on your political commitments.

if i or anyone else doesn't share those commitments, then they are all moot, really.

for example, you might argue that the space a particular advertiser purchases access to is private--but what is placed there impacts on public space. if it didn't, it wouldn't be there: the point is to impact on a public which passes, and so advertisement is designed to intrude on space that is NOT owned. so you have a question of the rights of an advertiser to intrude on public space from a position that is in itself privately owned as over against the right of the public to not be intruded upon. whether someone chooses to invoke this conflict or to act on the basis of it or not is a political question in general---as it the right to ownership itself, if you think about it---but whether someone chooses to act on the basis of such an argument is more or less random (unpredictable)

i figure you put the adverts up you take your chances.
i have no problem at all with defacing such---i just personally am so constructed that i think of good ideas after i've seen a potential target and usually forget about the whole thing before i act. i think it's good that others are differently wired.

it's not like any of these actions if going to bring about revolution--it's just nice to see advertising made into a political act by having political actions taken against particular examples.

In terms of the battle against ad creep... this blog features the efforts of a group in Toronto that seeks to have illegal ads and billboards removed from the streets of Toronto: illegalsigns.ca

Rather than engage in playful detournment, he is actually working the system to get illegal billboards removed. To me, this is much more effective in terms of real impact (tm).

(note: the placement of illegal and non-conforming billboards in Toronto is rampant)

I'm all for that. I'm all for creating laws that restrict how advertisements are placed all over the place here in NYC. Recently MTA filled the subway stations with massive amounts of advertisements to help budget shortfalls. I'm surprised that they don't start wrapping the trains like they do the buses.

In the city it's all noise, all noise trying to get out over the noise. So you culture jam something, you're just making more noise.

When they drape buildings some people don't get compensated for losing their windows, so they cut out window holes. One beer company made a play on it in Times Square stating they won something and you could see them drinking the beer in the window cutout.

NYC has wheatpaste problems where people post bills all over the place, even when it's posted to state "Post No Bills". Guerilla marketers staple hip hop record releases on street poles. These are all illegal and should be dealt with legally, not via vandalism.

Last year there was a "culture jammer" who was splashing all the graffitti art around the city. The graffitti group was all up in arms over it. Umm, hello, you're not in private space like a gallery, the wall you painted on isn't YOUR wall. The splasher splashed paint on many "old" and timeless graffitti spots. So who's right? The graffitti guys? The splasher? IMO, both of them are wrong since there shouldn't have been graffitti there in the first place.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...q/22a334b0.gif

walls are public spaces in the same way as the visual field invaded by advertising is. there's a version of this same problem with radio in the idea (now more or less purely an idea) that the airwaves are public. anyway, there's a great short film you might (or might not) enjoy:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303289/

i think there's something different going on with detournement than not wanting the adverts to be present--detournement is a political action that is explicit, public and ephemeral. removing them is replacing one overall aesthetic regime with another: either way, it is a decision made by authorities, where detournement is a creative (or destructive) political act made in (sometimes) an artistic manner. i like that--small gestures of defiance that are translated into a considered gesture in a public space.

like i said, i think this action is most powerful in the doing.


another way of looking at this is to wonder who decided that art has to be confined to galleries and at what point the decision (was there one?) taken that art=commodity?
why does that even make sense?

thanks....
here's an exceprt, i'm looking for the whole movie now
The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal



I think the question isn't who decided that art, it's who decided WHAT art, since there are many cities with art in public spaces. The people who are defacing are more or less upset that they didn't get to use the space themeselves in some manner, or don't approve of the use of the space.

tonight I stumbled upon absolutemachines.com, a sponsored intelligent machine. while skogafoss was bored, i was fascinated by the whole thing, you can play with it via the internet. absolute rented space in some building here in LES and they weren't asking or touting people to come in. We looked inside the window wondered why balls were bouncing.

http://www.absolut.com/absolutmachines