Culture jamming is a form of communication as a way of protesting consumerist society to disrupt or subvert media or mainstream culture or its institutions, including corporate advertising. By exposing mass culture, it attempts to affect a cultural shift.
I first witnessed it in Sydney on billboards that had been altered by a group called ‘buga up’. I though it was hilarious and clever. Purely by graffing a couple of letters the message of the ad was completely changed. It seemed to be focused on cigarettes, primarily. Still allowed everywhere, cheap and even the major sponsors of sport. My favourite artist ‘Banksy’ is a culture jammer. My (other) favourite artist, Grayson Perry has made a career of it.
The University of Washington writes that it ‘is an intriguing form of political communication’ borne out of the ‘commercial isolation of public life.’ Culture, politics and social values have been manipulated by commercial saturation. Public issues and social advocates are elbowed out to the fringes of society by market values and commercial communication.
Culture jamming plays with the branded images and icons of consumer culture to to bring consumer awareness to surrounding problems and diversity that warrant consideration.
The basic unit of communication in culture jamming is the meme: the core unit of cultural transmission. Memes are condensed images that stimulate visual, verbal, musical, or behavioural associations that people can be easily understood by others.
Grayson Perry, 2012, Lamentation, from ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’ http://visualarts.britishcouncil.org/
Culture jamming and meme-driven communication offer interesting windows on the transformation of politics and communication in our time. Humour that is based on surprise and engaging, these forms of visual communication may be useful to me in balancing the saturated commercial values with 'post human' society (or, my values. Hehe).