Culture Jamming
Summary:
“Culture jamming is a tactic used by many consumer social movements to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. Culture jamming is often seen as a form of subvertising. Many culture jams are simply aimed at exposing questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture so that people can momentarily consider the branded environment in which they live. Culture jams re-figure logos, fashion statements, and product images to challenge the idea of "what's cool," along with assumptions about the personal freedoms of consumption.
Culture jamming sometimes entails transforming mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, using the original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is usually employed in opposition to a perceived appropriation of public space, or as a reaction against social conformity. Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the BLF and Ron English and the street parties and protests organized by Reclaim the Streets. While most culture jamming focuses on subverting or critiquing political or advertising messages, some practitioners focus on a more positive, musically inspired form of jamming that brings together artists, scholars and activists to create new forms of cultural production that transcend rather than merely criticize the status quo.”
Summary of Tactics used in Culture Jamming:
“Culture jamming is a form of disruption that plays on the emotions of viewers and bystanders. Jammers want to disrupt the unconscious thought process that takes place when most consumers view a popular advertising and bring about a détournement. Activists that utilize this tactic are counting on their meme to pull on the emotional strings of people and evoke some type of reaction. The reactions that most cultural jammers are hoping to evoke are behavioral change and political action. There are four emotions that activists often want viewers to feel. These emotions, shock, shame, fear, and anger, are believed to be the catalysts for social change.”
Definitions:
Détournement: “A détournement is a variation on a previous media work, in which the newly created one has a meaning that is antagonistic or antithetical to the original. The original media work that is détourned must be somewhat familiar to the target audience, so that it can appreciate the opposition of the new message.”
Meme: “Identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another.”
“In analogy to a gene, a meme is the smallest unit of an ideology.”
Interest:
I came across the term culture jamming while researching the Billboard Liberation Front. For some reason I have never seen this term before and immediately had to research it. Many artists I have researched in the past I discovered fall under the category of culture jammers which told me I have been drawn to this topic/idea for some time now. After researching culture jamming I feel that it most closely describes my work and what I am trying to achieve thus far. I am excited to have found so many other organization and groups working on similar ideas and approaches that I am. I think that having found this vast amount of information on a topic dealing with consumerism in a similar process I work in will allow me to take my work to the next level. So same that culture jamming is dead while I tend to disagree with prominent figures such as Stephen Colbert.
Quotes:
“When we started Adbusters in 1989, the environmental movement was blossoming. People were recycling and reusing and becoming environmentalists in droves. But the other side of the coin, the mental environment, was being ignored. We thought it was absurd to recycle and ride your bicycle and do all the right things, and then, at the end of the day to sit down in front of your TV set and allow your mental space to be polluted by pro-consumption propaganda. So our mission became to launch an environmental movement of the mind.” - Kalle Lasn
Hadl, Gabriele “Culture Jammer's Guide to Enlightenment” Kyoto Journal. http://www.kyotojournal.org/kjselections/lasn.htm
Initially, advertisers viewed culture jammers as their enemies. In a few instances, outdoor-ad companies tried to discourage the practice by prosecuting the billboard guerrillas, but it didn't do much good. Gradually, however, some advertisers stopped fighting the rebels and started imitating them. "Culture jammers have had a big influence on the look and tone of advertising in recent years," says Annie Finnegan, an executive with the Arnold Communications ad agency in Boston. Finnegan, who has studied and lectured on the phenomenon of "guerrilla advertising" (the industry practice of disguising ads or putting them in unexpected places), notes that a number of advertisers have become highly adept at imitating not just the look of anti-advertising but the whole rogue spirit and attitude of it. "A lot of advertisers now have become almost like pranksters," Finnegan says.
"I feel kind of sorry for the culture jammers," concludes Finnegan. "It seems like now, whatever they try to do, advertising has already gotten there."
Berger, Warren “Advertising's voracious appetite for underground culture swallows another victim: culture jamming.” Metropolis Mag http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1000/ent.htm
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