The Art of Culture Jamming
Tuesday 17 April 2007Many people assume, with out too much knowledge, that culture jamming is just another form of graffiti. they see the political paint sprawl on the side of a bill board, or maybe they glance at an Adbusters spoof ad and don't quite understand.
however, culture jamming and subersive activism are getting to become quite popular. even eActivism (called hacktivism if you are a fan, and cyberterrorism is you aren't) and eCulture jamming are becoming more wide spread. the point of culture jamming is to use the media as a means of social commentary on something. be it using media to comment on media, or dressing up an elevator as an olden days style room to explain that you should not let socitey define your status,(1) it is used by people to comment on something.
most of the culture jamming and activism that i have come into contact with has been on the more artistic side, rather than the more technical variety. they say a picture says a thousand words, and that is true. images, of all varieties, have a great deal of power, and that medium has been utalised by culture jammers. the Adbusters spoof ads are an example of that. even something as simple as adding breasts onto one of the male figures on traffic lights as a comment on the prejudices of gender in society is culture jamming (2).
So, is culture jamming art then, if it uses a lot of the traditional and digital means that could be included in art? i don't think so. the two are in no way mutually exclusive, but neither are they mutually inclusive. there is some cross over, but not all culture jamming could, or should, be considered art.
culture jamming is about encouraging people to think, to think outside of the information they are being fed. it is about providing some commentary on soceity, generally by the use of existing media, with the intention of provoking some form of change. while art also is supposed to convey a meaning (post modern art in any case) or to tell a story, there is less emphasis on social commentary and social change.
something which is supposed to provoke a change, an action by people, is TV turn off week. it is being held next week (23rd-29th of April), and is a form of culture jamming. the idea is to turn off your TV, and all TV related things (including video game consoles) for a week.
But there’s a lot more to TV Turnoff Week than shaking up your relationship with
passive entertainment. It’s all about saying no to being bombarded with
unwelcome and unhealthy commercial messages. It's about saying no to unfettered
corporate media concentration and to the democratic deficit that results. And
it's about challenging the heavily distorted reflection of the world that we see
on the screen, a reflection that is keeping us ill-informed and unaware of the
very real political and environmental crises that we all currently
face. (http://adbusters.org/metas/psycho/tvturnoff/)
1) blog posted on Wooster Collective on Jan 6th, 2007, entitled "Don't Let Society Define Your Status".
2) blog posted on Wooster Collective on Feb 13th, 2007, entitled "Female".
