Culture Jam

Culture jamming (sometimes guerrilla communication) is a protest used by many anti-consumerist social movements to disrupt or subvert media culture and its mainstream cultural institutions, including corporate advertising. It attempts to "expose the methods of domination" of a mass society.Culture jamming employs a technique originally associated with Letterist International, and later Situationist International, known as détournement. It uses the language and rhetoric of the mainstream paradigm or culture to subversively critique that paradigm or culture. Tactics include editing logos to critique the company, product or concept they represent, or wearing fashion statements that criticize the current fashion trends by deliberately clashing with them. 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. Culture jamming is intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture. Culture jamming is a reaction against social 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 to create works that transcend the status quo rather than merely criticize it.