Meet the Culture Jammers: 8 Anti-Authority Artists and Activists You Should Know

Adbusters

Adbusters is a magazine that details the work of culture jammers from all over the world. It is also an organization that engages in culture jamming, primarily through producing and selling earth friendly products and by running its own advertising campaigns urging people to consume less.

The group is currently battling the Canadian government and one of Canada’s largest television networks in court over what they contend is the public’s “constitutionally protected right to expression over the public airwaves.” The lawsuit stems from Canadian networks’ refusal to air Adbusters’ consumer-awareness advertisements which aim to inform North-American people how they are being manipulated by big business into gross over-consumption of goods and to urge viewers to watch less TV.

From the Adbusters website:

We are a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age. Our aim is to topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live in the 21st century.

Memefest

An international culture jamming festival primarily aimed at students, Memefest is an annual competition for the creation of “radical communication.” Prizes are awarded and contributions to the competition are available for the public to view. Their site states:

Each year, Memefest singles out a text and/or image that serves as a focal point for a critical take on the current media environment. In the spring, the festival’s competition opens to both graduate and undergraduate students of Communication Studies, Sociology and Visual Arts (except the Beyond… Category which is open to non-students as well). Participants are asked to respond to the chosen texts and images with written or visual entries (according to their discipline).

Participation in Memefest is free.

Banksy

Though considered more of a street artist than a culture jammer, Banksy often bridges the gap with his social critiques. In a recent collaboration with DJ Danger Mouse, Banksy reworked the cover art and inlays of the new Paris Hilton album, adding satirical messages and altering the album’s photos and liner-notes, while DJ Danger Mouse made remixes of the songs. 500 copies were made of the remixed CD and it’s counterfeit packaging, and the fake Paris albums were then shop-dropped back onto the shelves of HMV and Virgin music stores throughout the UK for unsuspecting consumers to take home.

Billboard Liberation Front

The Billboard Liberation Front, founded by Jack Napier and Irving Glikk in 1977, has dedicated itself to the “improvement” of billboard messages for 30 years. This highly influential culture jamming outfit out of San Francisco prides itself on defacing outdoor advertisements and creating clever anti-corporate propaganda. The Billboard Liberation Front’s Manifesto states:

[T]he Billboard Liberation Front states emphatically and for all time herein that to Advertise is to Exist. To Exist is to Advertise. Our ultimate goal is nothing short of a personal and singular Billboard for each citizen. Until that glorious day for global communications when every man, woman and child can scream at or sing to the world in 100Pt. type from their very own rooftop; until that day we will continue to do all in our power to encourage the masses to use any means possible to commandeer the existing media and to alter it to their own design.

Graffiti Research Lab

The Graffiti Research Lab, founded by Evan Roth and James Powderly, is a group that develops “experimental” open source technologies for use in urban communication. Their work is unique in that it often employs laser projections and other such electronic tools in its vandalism.

One act of culture jamming vandalism performed by the Graffiti Research Lab was the construction of a large “Homeland Security Advisory Tower” on the corner of Spring and Elizabeth Streets in Manhattan. The electronic signs alternated the words “low,” “guarded,” “elevated,” and “high” as indicators of the nation’s security threat level.

John Fekner

Another old school original, New York’s John Fekner, is a street artist who was extremely active in the 70s. His art ranges from stencils of words and symbols to video and audio performances. With hundreds of works over a period of thirty years Fekner is known for his jabs at greed and chemical pollution and his adoption of the plight of Native Americans.

The Decapitator

An artist who’s been receiving a lot of attention online recently is known as The Decapitator. His/Her trademark vandalism of public advertisements portrays a dark sense of humor marked by gruesome headless figures and profuse blood-spray. The Decapitator’s anti-corporate agenda is delivered largely via bus stop ads to unsuspecting pedestrians in metro London.

The Yes Men

When it comes to sticking it to the man, none have been more successful than the notorious Yes Men. Their tactics: Infiltrate the beast and destroy from within. Utilizing a technique they call “identity correction,” The Yes Men release false, misleading and satirical information about their targets while pretending to be affiliated with them.

In 2004, the group went on tour posing as the group “Yes, Bush Can!” and encouraged supporters to sign a “Patriot Pledge” agreeing to keep nuclear waste in their backyard and send their children off to war. They appeared at the 2004 Republican National Convention and drove across the country at first in an RV with a George W. Bush body wrap, and then in a painted van. (via Wikipedia)

In another of the Yes Men’s hijinks (pictured here) one of the group posed as a representative of the World Trade Organization and gave a lecture in Philadelphia at Wharton Business School’s conference on business in Africa, where he announced the creation of a WTO initiative for “full private stewardry of labor” for the parts of Africa that have been hardest hit by the 500 years of Africa’s free trade with the West. The initiative, which advocates that Western nations enslave Africans buy “purchasing” workers was met with a warm reception at the conference.