Culture jamming

Culture jamming (sometimes also guerrilla communication)[1][2] is a form of protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements[3] to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of mass society.[4]

Culture jamming employs techniques originally associated with Letterist International, 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 logos to critique the respective companies, products, or concepts they represent, or wearing fashion statements that criticize the current fashion trends by deliberately clashing with them.[5] Culture jamming often entails using mass media to produce ironic or satirical commentary about itself, commonly using the original medium's communication method. Culture jamming is also a form of subvertising.[6][7]

Culture jamming aims to highlight and challenge the political assumptions underlying commercial culture, and argues that culture jamming is a response to socially imposed conformity. Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the Billboard Liberation Front and contemporary artists such as Ron English. Culture jamming may involve street parties and protests. 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[8] to create works that transcend the status quo rather than merely criticize it.[9][10] In addition to these political and cultural aims, researchers have noted that the pleasure involved in culture jamming plays an important role in sustaining participation. Analysts argue that fun can link individual acts of subversion to a broader, imagined protest community, helping disparate actions feel part of a shared project. This affective style both draws on and resists the dominant emotion regime of late capitalism, making emotional engagement not only a tactic but also an end in itself.[11]

Origins of the term, etymology, and history

The term was coined by Don Joyce[12] of American sound collage band Negativland, with the release of their album JamCon '84.[13][14] 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, Joyce stated:

According to Vince Carducci, although the term was coined by Negativland, the practice of culture jamming can be traced as far back as the 1950s.[16] One particularly influential group that was active in Europe was the Situationist International and was led by Guy Debord.

Tactics

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.[17] 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.[23] Culture jamming also intersects with forms of legal transgression. Semiotic disobedience, for example, involves both authorial and proprietary disobedience,[24] 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.[25]

Criticism

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.[34][35] 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.[9]

See also

• Anti-corporate activism
• Banksy
• Brandalism
• Counterculture
• Critical theory
• Dada
• Doppelgänger brand image
• The Firesign Theatre
• Minority influence
• Protest art
• Subvertising
• Tactical media

General and cited references

• Branwyn, Gareth (1996). Jamming the Media: A Citizen's Guide—Reclaiming the Tools of Communication. California: Chronicle Books ISBN 9780811817950
• 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. ISBN 9780312421434
• Kyoto Journal: Culture Jammer's Guide to Enlightenment
• Lasn, Kalle (1999) Culture Jam. New York: Eagle Brook. ISBN 978-0688178055
• LeVine, Mark (2005) Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-1851683659
• 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. ISBN 978-1-4798-0620-1
• 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.

Further reading

• DeLaure, Marilyn; Fink, Moritz; eds. (2017). Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-0620-1.

External links

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