Whatever happened to: culture jamming
Subverts take it online
BY Lisa Whittington-Hill
Referring to altered billboards and media manipulation, the term “culture jamming” was first used by California sound-collage band Negativland on their 1985 album, JAMCON ’84. Since then the slogan has been used to refer to a range of activities—from performance art to media pranks—that aim to critique and dismantle consumer culture by altering the meaning of corporate messages.
The practice has its roots in the Dada movement and draws inspiration from Guy Debord and the Situationists. But it was Adbusters magazine, and its founding editor, Kalle Lasn, that came to personify the phrase. Lasn once ambitiously predicted that, “[Culture jamming] will become to our era what civil rights was to the ’60s, what feminism was to the ’70s, what environmental activism was to the ’80s.”
Despite his best efforts, though, Adbusters-style culture jamming has been on the decline. After 18 years of publishing, critics say the magazine’s spoof ads and campaigns such as TV Turnoff Week and Buy Nothing Day are no longer relevant.
Culture jamming isn’t dead though—like so much else, it’s migrated to the web. Subverts have traded their Sharpies and spray paint for flash mobs and Googlebombs to get their messages across.
Timely online campaigns that spoof political pressure groups, rather than products, are becoming increasingly popular. Billionaires for Bush, a grassroots street troupe that impersonates CEOs and lobbyists to expose politicians who favour corporate interests over the average citizen, for example, has used its satirical website to promote events and spread its messages. The group now has an online community of more than 10,000 members. Debord would be proud.
