Culture jamming

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2009)

Anti-consumerism
Ideas and theory
Society of the Spectacle · Culture jamming · Corporate crime · Media bias · Buy Nothing Day · Alternative culture · Simple living · Do it yourself · Microgeneration · Autonomous building · Cultural Creatives · Commodity fetishism · Cultural hegemony · Conspicuous consumption · Ethical consumerism
Related social movements
Anarchism · Alter-globalization · Anti-globalization movement · Environmentalism · Situationist International · Postmodernism · Socialism
Popular works
Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs · No Logo · The Corporation · Affluenza · Escape from Affluenza · The Theory of the Leisure Class · Fight Club · Surplus: Terrorized into Being Consumers · Profit over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
Persons and organizations
Adbusters · Freecycle · Ralph Nader · Green party · John Zerzan · Noam Chomsky · Ron English · Naomi Klein · Thorstein Veblen · Guy Debord · Michael Moore · Michel Foucault · RTMark · The Yes Men · Reverend Billy · CounterCorp The E.R.A
Related subjects
Advertising · Capitalism · Economic problems · Left-wing politics · Sweatshops · Anti-consumerists · Social movements
This box: view • talk • edit

Culture jamming is a tactic in which an activist attempts to disrupt or subvert mainstream cultural institutions or corporate advertising. 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 organised by Reclaim the Streets. 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 sometimes confused with artistic appropriation, which is done for art's sake, and vandalism, in which destruction or defacement is the primary goal. Although the end result is not always easily distinguishable from these activities, the intent behind culture jamming is very different from that of artists and vandals. The lines are not always clear-cut; some activities, notably street art, will fall into two or even all three categories.

Origins

Coined by the collage band Negativland on its release JamCon '84, the phrase "culture jamming" comes from the idea of radio jamming: that public frequencies can be pirated and subverted for independent communication, or to disrupt dominant frequencies^[1].

One can attempt to trace the roots of culture jamming in medieval carnival, which Mikhail Bakhtin interpreted as a subversion of the social hierarchy (in Rabelais and his World). More recent precursors might include: the media-savvy agit-prop of the anti-Nazi photomonteur John Heartfield, the sociopolitical street theater and staged media events of '60s radicals such as Abbie Hoffman, the German concept of Spaßguerilla, and in the Situationist International (SI) of the 1960s. The SI first compared its own activities to radio jamming in 1968, when it proposed the use of guerrilla communication within mass media to sow confusion within the dominant culture.

Mark Dery's New York Times article on culture jamming, "The Merry Pranksters And the Art of the Hoax"^[2] 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",^[3] a seminal essay that remains the most exhaustive historical, sociopolitical, and philosophical theorization of culture jamming to date. Adbusters, a Canadian publication espousing an environmentalist critique of consumerism, began promoting aspects of culture jamming after Dery introduced editor Kalle Lasn to the term through a series of articles he wrote for the magazine. In her critique of consumerism, "No Logo," the Canadian cultural commentator and political activist Naomi Klein examines culture jamming in a chapter that cites Dery and focuses on the work of Jorge Rodriguez-Gerada.

List of culture jamming organizations or people

See also

• Artivist
• Culture
• Meme
• Broadcast signal intrusion
• Flashmob
• Little Red Songbook
• Operation Mindfuck
• Situationist International
• Scratch Video
• Steal This Book
• Subvertising
• Detournement
• Zombie walk

References

• Dery, Mark (1993). Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs. Open Magazine Pamphlet Series: NJ.^[1]
• King, Donovan (2004). University of Calgary. Optative Theatre: A Critical Theory for Challenging Oppression and Spectacle. [1]
• Klein, Naomi (2000). No Logo. London: Flamingo.
• Kyoto Journal: Culture Jammer's Guide to Enlightenment. [2]
• Lasn, Kalle (1999) Culture Jam. New York: Eagle Brook.
• 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.

External resources

• Culture Jamming page from the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement

References

1. ^ "Shovelware". Markdery.com. http://www.markdery.com/archives/books/culture_jamming/. Retrieved 2009-07-23.