Culture Jamming - attempts to awaken the minds of the unwashed masses

[KILZ FILLZ]

I think I stumbled across one in the wild recently - pic related

 

The most well known are probably Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) and indecline. 

 

I absolutely love this shit. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Culture jamming (sometimes guerrilla communication)[1][2] is a tactic used by many anti-consumerist social movements[3] 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 to foster progressive change.[4]

 

 

 

Culture jamming is a form of subvertising.[5] Many culture jams are intended to expose questionable political assumptions behind commercial culture. Culture jamming makes use of the technique détournement, which uses the language and rhetoric of the mainstream paradigm or culture to subversively critique the paradigm or culture. Tactics include re-figuring logos, fashion statements, and product images as a means to challenge the idea of "what's cool".[6] 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 employed as a reaction against social conformity. Prominent examples of culture jamming include the adulteration of billboard advertising by the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF), 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 more positive (often musically inspired) form which brings together artists, scholars, and activists to create new types of cultural production that transcend – rather than merely criticize – the status quo.[

 

 

 

 

[misteraven]

Remember this being a big thing in the early 1990s. Haven't heard of much of this kind of stuff these days. In fact, was talking to someone recently that it's been a long minute since I've heard much about Anonymous. For a bit it seemed like their exploits were making MSM coverage. Every day was some big announcement by them that had people talking. Now its just a twitter feed that feels like a shadow of what it was.

[Guest]

@misteraventhey're still active just in different ways. They were behind the 'its OK to be white' thing that causes all that uproar on college campuses about a year ago as well as the 'free bleeding' movement where women started boycotting the use of tampons and  pads.

[abrasivesaint]

Free bleeding was great. 

[misteraven]

Too lazy to look that up. Anyone want to summarize what free bleeding was all about or were they just poking fun at activism and how out of control some of it seems to be getting?

[Guest]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32448103/mystery-artist-highlights-bury-potholes-with-penis-drawings

 

 

 

 

A mystery "road artist" has been drawing pictures of penises around potholes in Bury as a way to get the council to fix them.

 

"They [potholes] don't get filled. They'll be there for months," says the artist, speaking to Newsbeat anonymously.

 

"People will drive over the same pothole and forget about it.

 

"Suddenly you draw something amusing around it, everyone sees it and it either gets reported or fixed."

 

He says his drawings have meant the potholes get fixed more quickly, although Bury Council says they already have a plan in place to deal with the issue.

 

 

 

8======D~~~ 😂 

 

[Guest]

[Guest]

5 hours ago, misteraven said:

Too lazy to look that up. Anyone want to summarize what free bleeding was all about or were they just poking fun at activism and how out of control some of it seems to be getting?

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a25781020/what-does-free-bleeding-mean/

 

Note the dates

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

 

 

[Mercer]

[misteraven]

On 9/18/2019 at 6:36 PM, KILZ FILLZ said:

https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a25781020/what-does-free-bleeding-mean/

 

Note the dates

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow man! I can't help but think there's some fucked up people that are just doing all they can to tear at the fabric of society. Who the fuck wants to be around anyone else that's just bleeding at all? Would be unacceptable to have some dude sitting next to you at a restaurant just bleeding all over the booth he's sitting in. Fucking gross that people are now trying to say because mensuration is natural that its cool to let women bleed all over themselves.

 

Fucked up shit.

[misteraven]

3 hours ago, Mercer said:

Good thing they got a quick shot because the custodial army that polishes that campus 24/7 are probably board polishing those windows for the 154th time that day. Bet that thing lasted for all of 25 seconds before they carted it off to building 17, section 428: waste management. LOL!

 

I'm all for pushing back on fucked up shit, but that was useless.

[Guest]

That's awesome. Gonna have to look and see what else that artist has done. 

[Guest]

@misteravenI'm curious how many women have actually done it for the entire week. Seems unhygienic and gross and uncomfortable not to mention you're basically ruining the underwear and pants from that week. Imagine the smell 😂 

[Guest]

 

 

Video is from the morning after they planted the flag. Article is from gallery show they had four years later. 

 

 

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.artnet.com/art-world/wermke-leinkauf-signs-and-symbols-debut-1348826/amp-page

 

The German artist duo that clandestinely planted white flags on New York’s Brooklyn Bridge four years ago are coming back to New York. Mischa Leinkauf and Matthias Wermke are still facing criminal charges in the US for the July 2014 stunt, in which they scaled the bridge under cover of darkness and replaced the two American flags with hand-sewn star spangled banners in all white.

 

Although the artists insist they treated the bridge respectfully and followed US flag code, the incident prompted a media frenzy, embarrassed police, and spurred fear and bewilderment among New Yorkers—as well as serious legal ramifications for the Berlin-based artists. Nonetheless, their debut solo exhibition in New York, “I THINK IT’S SAFE TO SAY,” opens today, September 14, at Signs & Symbols gallery. But will the artists be in attendance?

 

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” Leinkauf told artnet News, “but legally it’s not so easy.”

 

The show features a photographic edition, titled Landmarks, that questions limitations of space, artistic freedom, and boundaries within the public sphere. As part of the ongoing series, the duo draws attention to otherwise mundane buildings and architectural sites by planting flags sewn from high-visibility construction vests in order to assign significance to overlooked spaces. The interventions themselves often go unseen until they appear in an artistic context. “At first they exist only for ourselves until it is captured by the camera and finds an audience in the exhibition space, if at all,” Leinkauf said.

 

A newly released photographic edition of White American Flags (2014-18) will also be on view. The work encapsulates the core of Wermke and Leinkauf’s practice, which revolves around architectural interventions, finding loopholes in established systems, and occupying a space in the collective memory of populations. (They’ve cited Gordon Matta-Clark as an inspiration.)

 

 

[Mercer]

7 hours ago, KILZ FILLZ said:

Here's something I hate, this pop icon and the unread, practically politically illiterate masses that don't understand this is just entertainment. 

[Guest]

@MercerI haven't seen an episode. Is it Daily Show 2.0? That's what I imagine it being.

 

I cross posted that here because I think it fits in with this convo nicely since it's something that could be posted on a bus stop and most folk would walk past it without realizing what it says, thinking it's a normal ad for that show. 

 

 

On 9/18/2019 at 11:13 AM, KILZ FILLZ said:

 

blockquote widget

[Guest]

Ah man you quoted me mid edit. Cleaned up that paragraph with the white background. Copy paste from web is odd in 2019 oontz. 

 

@Mercerhere's what they said in an interview with NYT:

 

 

Their website suggests that for roughly a decade, Mr. Leinkauf, 37, and Mr. Wermke, 35, have focused on the often illegal margins of public spaces. “Places people pass through or pass by, but don’t usually notice, like tunnels and bridges or the tops of buildings,” Mr. Leinkauf elaborated.

 

Their projects (made public through films and exhibitions, mostly after completing the relevant escapades) are intended to draw attention to these sites and to the ambiguities and fragilities of public space. “Our work looks dangerous, but it’s not about that,” Mr. Leinkauf added. “We plan carefully and reduce risk to an absolute minimum."

 

But a cultural divide separates still-jittery New York from a much more laid-back, laissez-faire Berlin. “Few people would care if we did the same thing in Berlin,” Mr. Leinkauf noted. “Of course, we did not have the same problems with terrorism.”

 

As to the specific meaning of those flags, the artists chose indirection.

 

Mr. Wermke pointed out that Roebling “moved to the States because he couldn’t realize his dreams here in Germany, and the bridge for us is a symbol of freedom and creative opportunity.” He noted that Roebling based the design of the bridge’s towers partly on Divi Blasii, the Gothic church in his native Mühlhausen. Mr. Wermke and Mr. Leinkauf say that, before flying to New York, they took their white flags to Divi Blasii to give them a kind of informal consecration.

 

It so happens, Mr. Wermke added, that Roebling’s son, Washington, who took over the bridge’s construction after the death of his father from an accident, died on July 21, 1926. Hence the two white flags, like shrouds, for father and son, and the choice of July 21-22.

 

Asked whether they also had in mind Jasper Johns’s famous “White Flag” painting from 1955, whose enigmatic message has provoked its own speculation, Mr. Leinkauf answered this way:

 

“Johns painted objects of daily life, like flags. We are not comparing ourselves to Jasper Johns. But we do see buildings, bridges, and so on as the architecture of daily life, which often goes unnoticed.”

 

Mr. Wermke then cited a remark by Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, whom the two Germans admire. Mr. Petit walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center almost exactly 40 years ago.

 

Why did you do it? he was asked.

 

“There is no why,” he responded.

[Guest]

 

"Groups were invented to march in the annual parade in Berkeley, such as a pro-carnivore posse called People Eatin’ Them Animals (PETA), and the Undead Homeowners’ Association. The Salmon Run pranked the city’s annual Bay-to-Breakers l2k with people in salmon costumes running upstream against the other runners."

[Guest]

King Newa

[Mercer]

15 hours ago, KILZ FILLZ said:

Ah man you quoted me mid edit. Cleaned up that paragraph with the white background. Copy paste from web is odd in 2019 oontz. 

 

@Mercerhere's what they said in an interview with NYT:

 

 

Their website suggests that for roughly a decade, Mr. Leinkauf, 37, and Mr. Wermke, 35, have focused on the often illegal margins of public spaces. “Places people pass through or pass by, but don’t usually notice, like tunnels and bridges or the tops of buildings,” Mr. Leinkauf elaborated.

 

Their projects (made public through films and exhibitions, mostly after completing the relevant escapades) are intended to draw attention to these sites and to the ambiguities and fragilities of public space. “Our work looks dangerous, but it’s not about that,” Mr. Leinkauf added. “We plan carefully and reduce risk to an absolute minimum."

 

But a cultural divide separates still-jittery New York from a much more laid-back, laissez-faire Berlin. “Few people would care if we did the same thing in Berlin,” Mr. Leinkauf noted. “Of course, we did not have the same problems with terrorism.”

 

As to the specific meaning of those flags, the artists chose indirection.

 

Mr. Wermke pointed out that Roebling “moved to the States because he couldn’t realize his dreams here in Germany, and the bridge for us is a symbol of freedom and creative opportunity.” He noted that Roebling based the design of the bridge’s towers partly on Divi Blasii, the Gothic church in his native Mühlhausen. Mr. Wermke and Mr. Leinkauf say that, before flying to New York, they took their white flags to Divi Blasii to give them a kind of informal consecration.

 

It so happens, Mr. Wermke added, that Roebling’s son, Washington, who took over the bridge’s construction after the death of his father from an accident, died on July 21, 1926. Hence the two white flags, like shrouds, for father and son, and the choice of July 21-22.

 

Asked whether they also had in mind Jasper Johns’s famous “White Flag” painting from 1955, whose enigmatic message has provoked its own speculation, Mr. Leinkauf answered this way:

 

“Johns painted objects of daily life, like flags. We are not comparing ourselves to Jasper Johns. But we do see buildings, bridges, and so on as the architecture of daily life, which often goes unnoticed.”

 

Mr. Wermke then cited a remark by Philippe Petit, the French high-wire artist, whom the two Germans admire. Mr. Petit walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center almost exactly 40 years ago.

 

Why did you do it? he was asked.

 

“There is no why,” he responded.

I'm even more disappointed in that explanation than if it were meant as a statement against nationalism, or even the US in general. Honestly think going into another country and tampering with their flag, or replacing it with a white flag is intentionally disrespectful, they had to have known that and that this is a cheap publicity stunt like "piss jesus" or something. Hardly a constructive statement, and for an audience that doesn't exist.

 

Sure there might be small chance there's a single person alive commuting across the BK bridge that might be able to make the connection that Roebling's son died on the bridge in 1926, and so on. That is without hearing an explanation from the artist (which defeats the purpose IMO), but for the other 99.99999% of the public that has to look at that bridge every day this comes off as intentional disrespect towards the flag itself, not a good look unless it's your own flag you're using to make a statement. I'd never deface another country's flag with good intentions myself. To me that crosses a line on what I'm willing to do for attention.

 

Don't get me wrong though, I'm definitely not someone who big on nationalism, in fact I think nationalism has it's good, and bad sides but overall feel it does more harm than good. Also I actually enjoy/want more real graffiti especially on government property, even street art which I've never really hated on like most people my age on here that wrote graffiti. I even prefer bombing/hands over seeing murals, and pretty legals designed for the general public.

[Guest]

They wanted to stir some shit up and they did.

 

Their justification is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to hear from an art school student though. I'm not too big of a fan of the explanations either. Wouldve preferred silence, personally. 

 

It looks like since the white flags were taken as an insult, they have switched to flags made out of construction vests. Switch from bland, plain, vanilla to vibrant dayglo is nice. I think these are way more fun. @Mercer

 

 

[Guest]

[Guest]

I'd like to believe someone infiltrated Turning Point USA (republican meme farm) and did this, but it was probably just a lazy/tired intern that goofed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The fake seal’s appearance at the event seemed to catch everyone off guard. A White House spokesman told The New York Times that officials did not review the image before it appeared. Turning Point USA initially said it had no idea how it ended up there. Was it a prank or a political statement? Or was it a simple mistake by the audiovisual team, who perhaps pulled the wrong image off the internet? By Thursday, that seemed to be the explanation.

 

***

 

In an interview with The Times, the store’s proprietor, Charles Leazott, said he had created the image, based on the Russian double-headed eagle, a little over a year ago out of frustration with Mr. Trump and his policies. “This is the most petty piece of art I think I’ve ever designed,” said Mr. Leazott, who is based in Virginia and works in video production and graphic design. “This was every petty, little thing I could think of to needle him because he was driving me bananas with his politics.”

 

After he created the altered seal, Mr. Leazott shared it with friends, who encouraged him to sell it online, so he created a website and store and quickly moved on with his life. Then, on Thursday morning, he said he was surprised to come across his creation in a news article while he was drinking coffee and scanning Reddit.

 

“It kind of made my day,” he said."

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/presidential-seal-trump.amp.html

[Guest]

Caught in the wild. 

[Guest]

https://www.artinadplaces.com/

 

 

 

[Guest]

 

[Guest]

NYC subway 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the original for you to use as you see fit :

 

 

 

[Schnitzel]

do these count?

 the first graff I ever noticed

 

pretty blunt but early 80's

 

BUGAUP

 

 

 

 

 

Trippy I grew up near this one!

 

 

[Mercer]

Someone posted these fake notices on the entrance of Barclays Center calling out the NBA.