culture jamming
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Culture jamming (sometimes also
guerrilla communication Guerrilla communication and communication guerrilla refer to an attempt to provoke subversive effects through interventions in the process of communication. It can be distinguished from other classes of political action because it is not based on ...
) is a form of protest used by many
anti-consumerist Anti-consumerism is a sociopolitical ideology that is opposed to consumerism, the continual buying and consuming of material possessions. Anti-consumerism is concerned with the private actions of business corporations in pursuit of financial and ...
social movements to disrupt or subvert
media culture In cultural studies, media culture refers to the current Western capitalist society that emerged and developed from the 20th century, under the influence of mass media. The term alludes to the overall impact and intellectual guidance exerted by t ...
and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate
advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...
. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of
mass society Mass society is a concept that describes modern society as a monolithic force and yet a disaggregate collection of individuals. It is often used pejoratively to refer to a society in which bureaucracy and impersonal institutions have replaced some ...
. Culture jamming employs techniques originally associated with
Letterist International The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and cultural theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman rejoined by Jean-Louis Brau and Serge Berna as a schism from Isidore ...
, and later Situationist International known as '' détournement.'' It uses the language and rhetoric of mainstream culture to subversively critique the social institutions that produce that culture. Tactics include editing company
logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...
s to critique the respective companies, products, or concepts they represent, or wearing
fashion Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion i ...
statements that criticize the current fashion trends by deliberately clashing with them.Boden, Sharon and Williams, Simon J. (2002) "Consumption and Emotion: The Romantic Ethic Revisited", Sociology 36(3):493–512 Culture jamming often entails using
mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit informati ...
to produce
ironic Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique. Irony can be categorized into ...
or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using the original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is also a form of
subvertising Subvertising (a portmanteau of '' subvert'' and ''advertising'') is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. The cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term in 1991. Subvertisements are anti-ads that d ...
. Culture jamming is intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind
commercial culture Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and ...
, and can be considered a reaction against politically imposed social conformity. Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the
Billboard Liberation Front The Billboard Liberation Front practices culture jamming via altering billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message. It started in San Francisco in 1977. Advertising executives informed Jil ...
and
contemporary artists This is a list of artists who create contemporary art, i.e., those whose peak of activity can be situated somewhere between the 1970s (the advent of postmodernism) and the present day. Artists on this list meet the following criteria: *The person ...
such as
Ron English Ron English (born June 6, 1959) is an American contemporary artist who explores brand imagery, street art, and advertising. Career English has produced images on the street, in museums, in movies, books and television. He coined the term POPa ...
. Culture jamming may involve street parties and
protest A protest (also called a demonstration, remonstration or remonstrance) is a public expression of objection, disapproval or dissent towards an idea or action, typically a political one. Protests can be thought of as acts of cooper ...
s. While culture jamming usually focuses on subverting or critiquing political and advertising messages, some proponents focus on a different form which brings together artists, designers, scholars, and activists to create works that transcend the status quo rather than merely criticize it.


Origins of the term, etymology, and history


Coinage

The term was coined in 1984 by Don Joyce of American
sound collage In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as montage. This is often done throu ...
band
Negativland Negativland is an American experimental music band which originated in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1970s. They took their name from a Neu! track, while their record label (Seeland Records) is named after another Neu! track. The co ...
, with the release of their album ''
JamCon '84 ''JAMCON '84'' was the first volume in the ''Over the Edge'' series, which distills portions of Negativland's radio program '' Over the Edge'', broadcast on KPFA. This album was edited together from at least three different broadcasts recorded be ...
''.Dery, Mark (2010) New Introduction and revisited edition o
''Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs''
October 8, 2010
The phrase "culture jamming" comes from the idea of radio jamming, where public frequencies can be pirated and subverted for independent communication, or to disrupt dominant frequencies used by governments. In one of the tracks of the album, they stated:


Origins and preceding influences

According to
Vince Carducci Vince Carducci is a cultural critic and dean emeritus at College for Creative Studies. His essays, feature articles and reviews on the arts, culture and other topics have appeared in numerous publications since the mid-1980s, including Art and A ...
, although the term was coined by Negativland, culture jamming can be traced as far back as the 1950s. One particularly influential group that was active in Europe was the Situationist International and was led by Guy Debord. The SI asserted that in the past, humans dealt with life and the consumer market directly. They argued that this spontaneous way of life was slowly deteriorating as a direct result of the new "modern" way of life. Situationists saw everything from television to radio as a threat and argued that life in industrialized areas, driven by capitalist forces, had become monotonous, sterile, gloomy, linear, and productivity-driven. In particular, the SI argued humans had become passive recipients of ''the'' ''
spectacle In general, spectacle refers to an event that is memorable for the appearance it creates. Derived in Middle English from c. 1340 as "specially prepared or arranged display" it was borrowed from Old French ''spectacle'', itself a reflection of the ...
'', a simulated reality that generates the desire to consume, and positions humans as obedient consumerist cogs within the efficient and exploitative productivity loop of capitalism. Through playful activity, individuals could create '' situations'', the opposite of spectacles. For the SI, these situations took the form of the ''
dérive The ''dérive'' (, "drift") is a revolutionary strategy originally put forward in the "Theory of the Dérive" (1956) by Guy Debord, a member at the time of the Letterist International. Debord defines the ''dérive'' as "a mode of experimental ...
'', or the active drift of the body through space in ways that broke routine and overcame boundaries, creating situations by exiting habit and entering new interactive possibilities. The cultural critic
Mark Dery Mark Dery (born December 24, 1959)''Contemporary Authors Online'', s.v. "Mark Dery" (accessed February 12, 2008). is an American author, lecturer and cultural critic. An early observer and critic of online culture, he helped to popularize the ter ...
traces the origins of culture jamming to medieval carnival, which
Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( ; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...
interpreted, in ''Rabelais and his World,'' as an officially sanctioned subversion of the social hierarchy. Modern precursors might include: the media-savvy agit-prop of the anti-Nazi photomonteur
John Heartfield John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld; 19 June 1891 – 26 April 1968) was a 20th century German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photomontages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements. ...
, the sociopolitical street theater and staged media events of 1960s radicals such as Abbie Hoffman, Joey Skaggs, the
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
concept of Spaßguerilla, and in the Situationist International (SI) of the 1950s and 1960s. The SI first compared its own activities to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of
guerrilla communication Guerrilla communication and communication guerrilla refer to an attempt to provoke subversive effects through interventions in the process of communication. It can be distinguished from other classes of political action because it is not based on ...
within
mass media Mass media refers to a diverse array of media technologies that reach a large audience via mass communication. The technologies through which this communication takes place include a variety of outlets. Broadcast media transmit informati ...
to sow confusion within the dominant culture. In 1985, the
Guerrilla Girls Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within t ...
formed to expose discrimination and corruption in the
art world The art world comprises everyone involved in producing, commissioning, presenting, preserving, promoting, chronicling, criticizing, buying and selling fine art. It is recognized that there are many art worlds, defined either by location or alte ...
. Mark Dery's ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' article on culture jamming, "The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax" Dery, Mark (199
''The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax''
NYtimes article, December 23, 1990.
was the first mention, in the mainstream media, of the phenomenon; Dery later expanded on this article in his 1993 ''Open Magazine'' pamphlet, ''Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs'',Dery, Mark (1993

in ''Open Magazine Pamphlet Series'', 1993
a seminal essay that remains the most exhaustive historical, sociopolitical, and philosophical theorization of culture jamming to date. ''
Adbusters The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profit, pro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activis ...
'', a Canadian publication espousing an environmentalist critique of consumerism and advertising, began promoting aspects of culture jamming after Dery introduced founder and editor
Kalle Lasn Kalle Lasn () (born March 24, 1942) is an Estonian-Canadian film maker, author, magazine editor, and activist. Near the end of World War II, his family fled Estonia and Lasn spent some time in a German refugee camp. At age seven he was resettled ...
to the term through a series of articles he wrote for the magazine. In her critique of consumerism, ''
No Logo ''No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies'' is a book by the Canadian author Naomi Klein. First published by Knopf Canada and Picador in December 1999, shortly after the 1999 Seattle WTO protests had generated media attention around such issue ...
'', the Canadian cultural commentator and political activist
Naomi Klein Naomi A. Klein (born May 8, 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses, support of ecofeminism, organized labour, left-wing politics and criticism of corporate globalization, fascism, ecofascism ...
examines culture jamming in a chapter that focuses on the work of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada. Through an analysis of the Where the Hell is Matt viral videos, researchers Milstein and Pulos analyze how the power of the culture jam to disrupt the status quo is currently being threatened by increasing commercial incorporation. For example, T-Mobile utilized the Liverpool street underground station to host a flashmob to sell their mobile services.


Tactics

Culture jamming is a form of disruption that plays on the
emotions Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...
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
emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is currently no scientific ...
s that activists often want viewers to feel. These emotions –
shock Shock may refer to: Common uses Collective noun *Shock, a historic commercial term for a group of 60, see English numerals#Special names * Stook, or shock of grain, stacked sheaves Healthcare * Shock (circulatory), circulatory medical emergen ...
,
shame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion often associated with negative self-evaluation; motivation to quit; and feelings of pain, exposure, distrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. Definition Shame is a discrete, basic emotion, d ...
,
fear Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
, and
anger Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat. A person experiencing anger will often experience physical effects, su ...
– are believed to be the catalysts for social change. Culture jamming also intersects with forms of legal transgression. Semiotic disobedience, for example, involves both authorial and proprietary disobedience, while techniques such as coercive disobedience comprise acts of culture jamming combined with a demonstration of the retaliatory actions (legal consequences) handed down by the ruling apparatus. The basic unit in which a message is transmitted in culture jamming is the meme. Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioral associations that people can easily imitate and transmit to others. The term meme was coined and first popularized by geneticist Richard Dawkins, but later used by cultural critics such as
Douglas Rushkoff Douglas Mark Rushkoff (born February 18, 1961) is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open sourc ...
, who claimed memes were a type of media virus. Memes are seen as genes that can jump from outlet to outlet and replicate themselves or mutate upon transmission, just like a virus. Culture jammers will often use common symbols such as the McDonald's golden arches or Nike swoosh to engage people and force them to think about their eating habits or fashion sense. In one example, jammer
Jonah Peretti Jonah H. Peretti (born January 1, 1974) is an Internet entrepreneur, a co-founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, co-founder of ''The Huffington Post'', and developer of reblogging under the project "Reblog". Education and early career Peretti was b ...
used the Nike symbol to stir debate on sweatshop child labor and consumer freedom. Peretti made public exchanges between himself and Nike over a disagreement. Peretti had requested custom Nikes with the word "sweatshop" placed in the Nike symbol. Nike refused. Once this story was made public, it spread worldwide and contributed to the already robust conversation about Nike's use of sweatshops, which had been ongoing for a decade prior to Peretti's 2001 stunt. Jammers can also organize and participate in mass campaigns. Examples of cultural jamming like Perretti's are more along the lines of tactics that radical consumer social movements would use. These movements push people to question the taken-for-granted assumption that consuming is natural and good and aim to disrupt the naturalization of consumer culture; they also seek to create systems of production and consumption that are more humane and less dominated by global corporate
late capitalism Late capitalism, late-stage capitalism, or end-stage capitalism is a term first used in print by German economist Werner Sombart around the turn of the 20th century. In the late 2010s, the term began to be used in the United States and Canada t ...
. Past mass events and ideas have included
Buy Nothing Day Buy Nothing Day is a minor event of protest against consumerism. In North America, the United Kingdom, Finland and Sweden, Buy Nothing Day is held the day after U.S. Thanksgiving, concurrent to Black Friday; elsewhere, it is held the followin ...
, virtual sit-ins and protests over the Internet, producing ‘subvertisements' and placing them in public spaces, and creating and enacting ‘placejamming' projects where public spaces are reclaimed and nature is re-introduced into urban places. The most effective form of jamming is to use an already widely recognizable meme to transmit the message. Once viewers are forced to take a second look at the mimicked popular meme they are forced out of their comfort zone. Viewers are presented with another way to view the meme and are forced to think about the implications presented by the jammer. More often than not, when this is used as a tactic the jammer is going for shock value. For example, to make consumers aware of the negative body image that big-name fashion brands are frequently accused of causing, a subvertisement of Calvin Klein's 'Obsession' was created and played worldwide. It depicted a young woman with an eating disorder throwing up into a toilet. Another way that social consumer movements hope to utilize culture jamming effectively is by employing a metameme. A metameme is a two-level message that punctures a specific commercial image but does so in a way that challenges some larger aspect of the political culture of corporate domination. An example would be the "true cost" campaign set in motion by ''Adbusters''. "True cost" forced consumers to compare the human labor cost and conditions and environmental drawbacks of products to the sales costs. Another example would be the "Truth" campaigns that exposed the deception tobacco companies used to sell their products. Following critical scholars like
Paulo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997) was a Brazilian educator and philosopher who was a leading advocate of critical pedagogy. His influential work '' Pedagogy of the Oppressed'' is generally considered one of the found ...
, Culture jams are also being integrated into the university classroom "setting in which students and teachers gain the opportunity not only to learn methods of informed public critique but also to collaboratively use participatory communication techniques to actively create new locations of meaning." For example, students disrupt public space to bring attention to community concerns or utilize subvertisements to engage with
media literacy Media literacy is an expanded conceptualization of literacy that includes the ability to access and analyze media messages as well as create, reflect and take action, using the power of information and communication to make a difference in the w ...
projects.


Examples

* Artivist *
Billboard hacking Billboard hacking or billboard hijacking is the illegal practice of altering a billboard without the consent of the owner. It may involve physically pasting new media over the existing image, or hacking into the system used to control electronic ...
* Broadcast signal intrusion *
Flash mob A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression. Flash mobs may be organized via t ...
* Happening * Practical joke topics * ''
Steal This Book ''Steal This Book'' is a book written by Abbie Hoffman. Written in 1970 and published in 1971, the book exemplified the counterculture of the sixties. The book sold more than a quarter of a million copies between April and November 1971. The numb ...
'' ;Groups *
Guerrilla Girls Guerrilla Girls is an anonymous group of feminist, female artists devoted to fighting sexism and racism within the art world. The group formed in New York City in 1985 with the mission of bringing gender and racial inequality into focus within t ...
*
The Yes Men The Yes Men are a culture jamming activist duo and network of supporters created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos. Through various actions, the Yes Men primarily aim to raise awareness about problematic social and political issues. To date, t ...
*
Billboard Liberation Front The Billboard Liberation Front practices culture jamming via altering billboards by changing key words to radically alter the message, often to an anti-corporate message. It started in San Francisco in 1977. Advertising executives informed Jil ...
*
Crimethinc CrimethInc., also known as CWC, which stands for either "CrimethInc. Ex-Workers Collective" or "CrimethInc Ex-Workers Ex-Collective", is a decentralized anarchist collective of autonomous cells. * * * CrimethInc. emerged in the mid-1990s, initia ...
*
Merry Pranksters The Merry Pranksters were comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy roa ...
* Operation Mindfuck *
Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions, or B.U.G.A.U.P. (" bugger up") is an Australian subvertising artistic movement. It practices billboard hijacking using détournement or modification with graffiti of such billboard a ...
*
monochrom Monochrom (stylised as monochrom) is an international art-technology-philosophy group, publishing house and film production company. It was founded in 1993, and defines itself as "an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop att ...


Criticism

The intent of those participating in culture jamming sometimes differs from that of people whose intent, apolitical and with no radical orientation, is either artistic or merely destructive. Some activities, notably street art, may be deemed culture jamming, artistic appropriation, vandalism, or even all three at once, by the social institutions and authorities that it seeks to disrupt. Some scholars and activists, such as Amory Starr and Joseph D. Rumbo, have argued that culture jamming is futile because it is easily co-opted and commodified by the market, which tends to "defuse" its potential for consumer resistance.Rumbo, Joseph D. (2002) "Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of Adbusters", ''Psychology & Marketing'' 19(2): 127–48. A newer understanding of the term has been called for that would encourage artists, scholars and activists to come together and create innovative, flexible, and practical mobile art pieces that communicate intellectual and political concepts and new strategies and actions.


See also

*
Anti-corporate activism Anti-corporate activism refers to the idea of activism that is directed against the private sector, and specifically against larger corporations. It stems from the idea that the activities and impacts of big business are detrimental to the p ...
*
Banksy Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigram ...
* Brandalism *
Counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...
* Critical theory * Doppelgänger brand image *
Minority influence Minority influence, a form of social influence, takes place when a member of a minority group influences the majority to accept the minority's beliefs or behavior. This occurs when a small group or an individual acts as an agent of social change by ...
*
Protest art Protest art is the creative works produced by activists and social movements. It is a traditional means of communication, utilized by a cross section of collectives and the state to inform and persuade citizens. Protest art helps arouse base emot ...
*
Subvertising Subvertising (a portmanteau of '' subvert'' and ''advertising'') is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements. The cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term in 1991. Subvertisements are anti-ads that d ...
* Tactical media *
The Firesign Theatre The Firesign Theatre (also known as the Firesigns) was an American surreal comedy troupe who first appeared on November 17, 1966, in a live performance on the Los Angeles radio program ''Radio Free Oz'' on station KPFK FM. They continued ap ...


Notes


References

* Branwyn, Gareth (1996). ''Jamming the Media: A Citizen's Guide - Reclaiming the Tools of Communication''. California: Chronicle Books * Dery, Mark (1993). ''Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs''. Open Magazine Pamphlet Series: NJ. * King, Donovan (2004). University of Calgary
''Optative Theatre: A Critical Theory for Challenging Oppression and Spectacle''
* Klein, Naomi (2000). ''No Logo'' London: Flamingo. *

' * Lasn, Kalle (1999) ''Culture Jam''. New York: Eagle Brook. * LeVine, Mark (2005)'' Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil''. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications. * LeVine, Mark (2017) "Putting the 'Jamming' into Culture Jamming: Theory, Praxis and Cultural Production During the Arab Spring," in DeLaure, Marilyn; Fink, Moritz; eds. (2017). ''Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance''. New York University Press. * * Tietchen, T. ''Language out of Language: Excavating the Roots of Culture Jamming and Postmodern Activism'' from William S. Burroughs' ''Nova'' Trilogy ''Discourse: Berkeley Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture.'' 23, Part 3 (2001): 107–130. * * Milstein, Tema & Pulos, Alexis (2015). "Culture Jam Pedagogy and Practice: Relocating Culture by Staying on One's Toes".
Communication, Culture & Critique
' 8 (3): 393–413.


Further reading

* *DeLaure, Marilyn; Fink, Moritz; eds. (2017). ''Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance''. New York University Press.


External links

*

{{Conformity Activism by type Underground culture Anti-corporate activism Practical jokes 1980s neologisms