Culture Jamming - The War on Brands
Dr. Peter Milne is a lecturer at the University of Queensland. His qualifications include a PhD, a masters in visual art and a bachelor of fine arts. Today he graced a group of young public relations students with his presence and introduced to them the concept of Visual Culture Jamming.
Dr. Milne describes Culture Jamming as an engagement with existing media
in a socially critical way. It involves inverting existing media;
turning things upside down to create something politically challenging. Cultural Jammers believe that iconic brands are a damaging influence on our personal identities, and therefore on society. They have waged a war against the big brands.
Visual Culture Jamming starts off with detournement; the act of of lifting an image or message out of its context to give it a new meaning. Artists play around with the iconic images of society in a humorous way, usually to make a political statement.
Large corporations are often the target of Culture Jams, as they are influential players in creating culture. Culture Jamming keeps up the pressure on political figures and corporations to adjust to the concerns of the consumer.
It could be said that the rapid increasing popularity of Culture Jamming could also be the death of it. There are many examples of things that start out as counter-cultural statements, then are commoditised and mass-produced to the point where their original meaning is no longer recognisable, undermining the wit of the Culture Jam in the first place. The Jam ends up becoming everything it once hated.
The battle for virtuous Culture Jamming continues today in a society where the very institutions sought out to challenge, are the ones most taking advantage of the Jam.
Here are some examples of popular Culture Jams.
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