Cultural Activism and Culture Jamming
Cultural activism is not quite the same as traditional political activism.
Within the sphere of traditional activism, there are issues like war, nuclear
power, abortion and standard organizational principals and consciousness-raising
strategies. Cultural activism (and more specifically culture jamming), in
many ways goes beyond traditional strategies that have typified political
action concentrating on issues like distribution and the public nature of
art. It even goes beyond traditional barriers, embracing illegal methods
of obtaining their goals. Another aspect that characterizes cultural activism
is a belief that traditional methods (demonstrations, pamphleting, etc.)
have proven ineffective when a whole cultural apparatus is geared toward
reinforcing those habits and lifestyles which generate outstanding profits.
Cultural activism is engaged in looking at the way fundamental factors of
current culture contribute to a wide range of negative effects. Cultural
activism is as well concerned with how individuals interact with their environment
and seeks to influence the process of social replication.
Culture "jamming," as the name implies, involves disrupting normal
modes of cultural transmission. Because radio is increasingly corporate controlled,
pirating unused radio spectrums and broadcasting a different message is a culture
jam. It usually works to disrupt, disengage, block, spoof, or destroy the message
of the dominant medias. Cultural "activism" is the construction of
independent forums for cultural expression, outside the limits of commercialism
or institutions. This involves media groups who share equipment costs and ideas,
while trying to organize others to create their own cultural outlets.
Cultural activism's focus is not on "politics" but "culture," or
perhaps it is interested in the politics of culture. This means that it is
an activist culture that tries to look at the underlying forms of power which
constricts culture and makes attempts at breaking through those controls. It
also means putting the cultural at the service of political goals, this is
where the terms "activist art" or "political art," "media
piracy" (radio, print, TV, film, internet publishing), and "hactivism" all
have a common denominator of cultural activism and culture jamming. All these
practices contribute to the notion that there must be a place for independent
modes of communication and that cultural expression should be controlled more
democratically, outside of the confines of commercial enterprise. If art does
work within the confines of dominate media, it should do so critically, with
the intention of subverting its message.
Adrienne Rich's "Notebooks" and Nina Felshin's "But Is It Art?" both
discuss the intersection of art and politics. In Rich's text, we get a great
discussion aimed toward uncovering the fundamental links between art and politics.
What does it mean to produce "political" art? She quotes Tolstoy,
who surprisingly held "political art" in disdain. He says,
It is one thing to understand something and express it logically, and
quite another to assimilate it organically, reconstructing the whole system
of one's feelings, and to find a new kind of artistic expression for this
new entity. (46)
This is to say that things that get the label "political" are usually
something entirely different, an artist feigning commitment to a certain cause,
for instance. Or "political art" could be as Ghanaian writer Ayi
Kewi Armah said in a recent speech, exhibitions of "a self-indulgent bourgeois." What
is most significant in Trotsky's statement is that art can be critical of society
without being understood by the artist, and can be "bad (when it is bad)
not because it is engaged, but because it is not engaged enough: when it tries
to express what has been logically understood but not yet organically assimilated."(Rich
47 author's emphasis).
Rich provides a good example of what it might be like if art and politics were
not divided in such a way. She provides an example of an artist who she believes
has "organically assimilated" the political. She quotes muralist
Elizabeth Catlett, who states,
Among other things, I learned that my sculpture and my prints had
to be based on the needs of people. These needs determine what I do.
Some artists say they express themselves: they just reflect their environment.
We all live in a given moment in history and what we do reflects what
level we are on in that moment. You must, as an artist, consciously determine
where your own level is. (51)
Rich's book analyses as well the role that institutions and cultural structures
play in the dissemination of engaged art. She speaks of the censorship which
went on under Stalin and the different, but equally effective methods applied
in the United States. She says that censorship comes in many forms, and she
cites "the shrinkage of arts funding, the censorship-by-clique, the censorship
by the right, the censorship by distribution" (42). The main argument
is that it does not matter how radically art is politically if the means of
cultural circulation is blocked or if the amplitude necessary to affect social
conditions is controlled by the self-interested few. This is one development
which cultural activism seems to try to address. The rise of "independent
media" groups like indymedia.org produced a consequent rise in the many "media
collectives" of video artists and art groups who have tried to re-engineer
the ways people come to understand the world. It is a direct response to the
institutionalization and professionalization of cultural sites. It is as well
a response to the methods of selection and exclusion which produce (in an "acceptable" manner)
the same kind of repression one might find in a much more controlled society.
Perhaps we could criticize Rich's overstatement of the role that poetry could
play in determining the face of struggle. In the early part of the book she
describes going to a mall bookstore and finding a small section of poetry on
the bottom-shelf Poetry is marginalized in major publishing, but her suggestions
of making public space more open to poetry seem reductive. She believes that
poetry is not a spectacle, being as it is independent of technology. She says, "I
cannot write a poem to manipulate you. It will not succeed" (84). But
is she saying that the poem will not succeed as a poem, or not succeed in its
manipulation. Although Rich says she does not argue for poetry's purity, I
am a bit skeptical with her belief that poetry could not be used in service
of the "society of the spectacle." Kurt Vonnegut wrote recently about
the confluence of art and politics, and the role of the artist in opposition
to society:
We ["every artist worth a damn"] formed what might be described
as a laser beam of protest [to the Vietnam war], with everybody aimed
in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have
the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from
a stepladder five-feet high.
This serves as a small caution that what may seem to be a valid proposition,
that poetry has innate political power, might be believable more to those who
are involved in its creation, publication, etc.
Nina Felshin also uncovers the intersection between art and politics in But
Is It Art: The Spirit of Art as Activism. In the introduction, she makes clear
the difference between "public art" that encourage public participation
and that which only "employ its trappings." Felshin locates a difference
between "political art" and "activist art" when she says "[t]he
fact that a political work is publicly sited, in exclusively physical terms,
does not guarantee comprehension or public participation" (20). One of
the underlying themes of the different essays contained in this book is the
notion of public participation.
Felshin centers on the question of for whom art is made. She emphasizes democratizing
principles of many activist-artistic endeavors. The key to these projects is
the sense that ordinary people outside of the art world should be encouraged
to involve themselves through interpretation in art. Some of the strategies
discussed by the various authors are combating the distribution patterns which
eliminate art from the lives of most citizens. A second strategy is to produce
art which directly addresses community concerns, as is described in the essay
dealing the art of Helen and Newton Harrison. Their art is very technical,
looking like drafts of public-works projects and deals with more sustainable
ways of arranging the environment. One strategy is to ally oneself with an
existing activist program, as did Canadian artists Carole Condé and
Karl Bevridge. In the later stages of their career they worked directly with
a local union, producing art to be displayed in union halls. Another strategy
is to attack pertinent issues, AIDS and the woman's movement (WAC and Guerrilla
Girls) are discussed here.
One of the most appropriate articles to discuss when dealing with cultural
activism and culture jamming in particular, is the essay, "Group Material
Timeline: Activism as Work of Art" by Jan Avgilkos. The history of this
art group spans three decades and has in its history embraced a multitude of
strategies. They began as a group of artists who together funded a gallery
in a poor district in New York City. The idea was to involve the community,
produce art shows that directly affected the lives of the community, and use
that as a stepping-stone toward increasing the collective power of the neighborhood.
These dreams failed due to internal group dynamics and the sense that their
work could be likened to a "ball and chain."
To question Group Material's missionary zeal from another perspective, however,
the Group's appropriation of an economically depressed, predominantly Hispanic
neighborhood can be interpreted as an act of colonization…. who can say
that such events [art shows, speakers, dances] were perceived by locals as
anything more than free entertainment provided by congenial "outsiders"?
(112)
So started the Group Material's next phase of attacking the notion of distribution.
During this phase, the Gallery was scrapped and the notion of "public
art" was engaged upon. In December 1981 and again in September of 1983,
they instituted a set of rented subway ad space where they chose to display
their art.
As Avgilkos says, "[t]he art spoke about alienation from the workplace,
urban fear, public education, the "new face of Uncle Sam," independence
for Puerto Rico, and other political topics." Another project were posters
illegally pasted on an abandoned building in Union Square. They consisted of
statements from activist groups side-by-side with statements by people identified
only by their profession.
The final stage of Group Material's long legacy was its movement into the institutions
of the art world. The idea of "sleeping with the enemy" is discussed
and Avgilkos makes a pretty convincing argument that the concessionary nature
of this move was not negative at all. She argues that "to oppose the institutions,
put art in the hands of the proletariat, and join hands in revolution" is
circumspect if not entirely untenable. This is the strategy of those "who
institutionalized the politics out of art by consigning it to fight battles
it can never win" (112-113). People need to stop viewing the world as
black and white binaries of "us" vs. "them."
Although Felshin and Rich look at older modes of cultural production, Naomi
Klein's "No Logo" and Kalle Lasn's "Culture Jam" both deal
with a new artistic and political expression: culture jamming. I think there
is also a parallel between the essays in Felshin's book and the idea of culture
activism and culture jamming, in that most of the essays deal with artistic
movements that were underway in the 1970s and 1980s, which provides an historical
context for the emergence of culture jamming in the 90s. All carry the theme
of an artistic reaction to the political life of individuals living in North
American's media saturated environment with its exclusive institutions of culture.
Naomi Klein provides an even more expanded view of the history of culture jamming,
taking it back to the 1930s, which coincided with the initial wave of the brand's
ascendance in North American culture. Klein documents that evidence of culture
jamming, and more specifically "taking on the brand bullies" can
be traced back to the Ballyhoo, "a sort of depression-era Adbusters," says
Klein. The Ballyhoo was a parody magazine which had a short run circa 1930-'31.
The Ballyhoo arrived as a cynical new voice, viciously mocking the "creative
psychiatry of cigarette and mouthwash ads, as well as the outright quackery
used to sell all kinds of potions and lotions… The editors encouraged
readers to move beyond their snickers and go out and bust bothersome billboards
themselves. (304)
The ad "Twitch Toucher-Upper School" shows a woman drawing a moustache
on an advertisement displaying a woman's face. This has been directly copied
by current "skulling" campaigns which disfigure the faces of advertising.
But Klein says that the most prescient exhibitions of culture jamming were
the photos of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. Their
tortured scenes depicted of the wasted lives of people affected by the Great
Depression and the suffering that American capitalism had produced.
Klein goes on to describe current examples of culture jamming. The people and
groups she describes are
Biotic Baking Brigade: The BBB focuses on the corporate world with its "distinctly
lower-tech approach" of pie slinging. Victims include Bill Gates, Robert
Shapiro (CEO Monsanto), Ken Derr (Chevron), Renato Ruggiero (World Trade Organization),
and Milton Friedman (the "architect of global free trade") (326)
ArtFux: This billboard alteration group creates their own billboard adhesives,
pasting them over existing corporate messages.
Billboard Liberation Front: The BFL takes a slightly different approach in
that their Billboards are reconstructions or reconfigurations of previous messages.
Reclaim the Streets: The RTS movement began in England when raves were made
illegal in 1994.
To fight the Criminal Justice Act, the club-scene…forged new alliances
with more politicized subcultures…. [and] with squatters facing eviction,
with the so-called New Age travelers facing crackdowns on their nomadic lifestyle,
and with radical "eco-warriors" fighting the paving-over of Britain's
woodland areas. (312)
The result of these unlikely political alliances have been the growth of large-scale
impromptu street-parties which call attention to the need to reclaim social
space. Klein makes the connection to culture activism this way: "like
adbusters, RTSers have transposed the language and tactics of radical ecology
into the urban jungle, demanding uncommercialized space…" Klein
describes others groups like the "Uksubs" a subvertising group, and
Activist video networks like the Oxford-based Undercurrents, but places emphasis
upon those activities described above. Her discussion uncovers trends in culture
jamming; many of which are still going four years later (No Logo was published
in 1999).
Naomi Klein argues that "the book you are holding helps to prove, there
is clearly still room for corporate critiques within the media giants." (192)
However, it does not follow that books put out within major media should be
beyond scrutiny when it comes to their presumed or unpresumed affiliations.
No Logo did come out within the main cultural channels, and there might be
reason to believe that contained within the text are notions which are beneficial
to corporate power. No doubt one could read this book as a way to get on the "inside" of
the anti-corporate movement. Yet the major brands might also find it of value
toward restructuring their brand campaigns. In describing the various sides
of the issue Klein gives the keys to making successful attacks, for both sides
of the confrontation. The publisher's introduction makes it clear that
In a world in which all that is "alternative" is sold as soon as
it appears, where any innovation or subversion is promptly adopted by faceless
corporations, a new generation is beginning to fight consumerism with its own
best weapons. With compelling accounts of the corporate invasion of our daily
lives, and the growing backlash against it, No Logo is equal parts cultural
analysis, mall-rat memoir, political manifesto, and journalistic exposé.
Notice that the descriptions leaves out completely her analysis of sweatshop
labor and Export Processing Zones, which constitute the main part of the book.
As with all supposedly "leftist" books, the London Observer proclaims
on the back cover "the Das Kapital of the growing anti-corporate movement." The
publishers statement also succeeds in expressing exactly the opposite of what
it is doing, namely publishing an "alternative" innovation or subversion
as soon as it appears. One can see a parallel in Klein's thinking when she
describes an argument over corporate-controlled "codes of conduct":
" 'These documents are written by the transnational corporations, so they
will only serve the transnational corporations—haven't you read Marx?'"
" 'It's different now," I countered. "With globalization, there
need to be some common standards—and the governments certainly aren't setting
them.'"
We see that Klein is closer to the "center," or "the status
quo" than her radical counterpoint "Zernan Toledo (who personally
favors armed revolution—it's just a question of when)" (439). Since
her argument does not quite go so far as to call into question fundamental
problems within corporate culture, her discussion is useful for developing
anti-anti-corporate strategy and to steer truly subversive factions of culture
closer to the center.
Kalle Lasn argues in his book Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America™ that
the history of culture jamming can be better traced back to the Situationalist
International (which commenced in 1957). He says at one point that
[w]e place ourselves on a revolutionary continuum that includes, moving backward
in time, early punk rockers, the '60s hippy movement, a group of European intellectuals
and conceptual artists called the Situationalist International…the surrealists,
Dadaists, anarchists, and a host of other social agitators down through the
ages whose chief aim was to challenge the prevailing ethos in a way that was
so primal and heartfelt it could only be true.
Leaving aside that these trends may not work well together (punk was a response
to decadent hippydom), it is important to notice the rhetorical positioning
here. We should notice that it calls upon us to see Lasn as being a part, if
not leader, of the current culture jamming vanguard. In the opinion of his
detractors, Lasn is a popularizer of a current phase of a pseudo-revolutionary
movement. This tendency to make culture jamming accessible to a general audience
has its effects. Lasn is encouraged to gloss-over culture jamming’s potential
for illegality. Thus he does not discuss practices like those of the Billboard
Liberation Front, Ron English, and others (ArtFux's Rodriguez de Gerada, Pedro
Carvajal). It seems rather curious that Lasn does not discuss Billboard alteration,
since that is one of the major influences on current culture jamming.
Lasn does give extensive treatment to a wide variety of topics such as environmental
destruction, the mediated cultural environment, the culture of fear and the
comfort assured by products, a psychological analysis of the mediated human,
and finally possible culture jamming strategy. He also discusses the strange
nature of modern economics that sees many negative factors (like the oil spill
of the Exxon Valdez) as raising the Gross Domestic Product. It could be said
that his discussion a bit ethnocentric and that it is ripe for class analysis.
At one point, he makes the laughable proposition that
[t]he idea is catching on that each of us should "have" a personal
farmer, the way we now have a doctor, lawyer, or dentist, a single individual
we can trust to supply us with healthy, safe, flavorful produce. (175)
Perhaps Lasn has not realized that many of "us" do not have a doctor,
lawyer, or dentist, and the idea of "having" a personal farmer is
only a privilege of the few. Certainly his whole idea of "downshifting,"(i.e. "folks
who have voluntarily cashed out of their high-paying jobs and simplified their
lives" (53)) is geared to those who have the opportunity to do so, for
many the "upshifting," (longer working hours, forced overtime) has
been a defining feature of the past decade. It becomes obvious that this book
is written by and from a fully privileged western perspective.
Variety of cultural activism: what is online now?
There are many different aspects to cultural activism, using widely diverging
media. There are tactical media projects, billboards alteration, direct consumer
actions like re-code.org, vandalism campaigns such as re-logo.org, website
alteration, "hactivism," Reclaim the Streets, Biotic Baking Brigade,
the staged but serious theatrics of The Yes Men, and umbrella organizations
like ™ark and Adbusters. The aims and targets are more or less similar,
corporations and their advertising campaigns. The goal is to consistently make
the point that the unchecked actions of corporate entities are representative
of a society in which, to use the words of Naomi Klein, consumerism has usurped
citizenship.
™ ark is a group which solicits culture jamming projects and is, incidentally,
a corporation. They match investors to projects which attack the political-corporate
world. One project was a vote-selling website (which never actually sold votes).
The government shut down the site. This is a typical occurrence, a website is
created which attacks a company or other consumer concept, and after receiving
a cease and desist order, the website is voluntarily shut down. The project can
still be a success if enough media attention is brought to bear on the event.
Probably the most recent example of this is re-code.org, which was a website
which dispensed bar codes, based upon the lowest price available in the area.
It is unknown if this was ever used, but the potential was enough for Wal-mart
and others to notify their lawyers. The site has been shut down, yet a discussion
of the website and the diatribe against Wal-mart remains.
The Yes Men are another interesting example. They have created a website, gatt.org,
which pretends to be the World Trade Organization, staging serious yet over
the top speeches to unsuspecting businessmen. The speeches are very professional,
yet propose "unimaginable" solutions, as they did last year in Australia,
like changing the global monetary system to benefit the poorest countries.
This is an example of a "high-end" culture jam, one that required
major funds (plane tickets, suits) and a substantial amount of creativity and
research. There are also certain websites which are quite seamless in their
representation of corporate sites. They produce products, software, etcetera,
that are really complex. One thing which unites the diverse forms of culture
jamming is the high priority placed on irony in action. The job is to fool
the spectator, to produce a détournment just enough so that they might
come to understand the project's deeper engagement.
Hactivism
One of the reasons for the importance of online culture in notions of culture
jamming is due to the impact of "Zapatismo" following the uprising
in Chiapas in 1994. Since their appearance on the world stage, the Zapatista
National Liberation Army (EZLN) in Mexico has effectively used the Internet
to get out their message and gander sufficient international support to prevent
the Mexican government from eliminating them. Their technological ability,
and indeed their "postmodern revolutionary tactics" have been consistently
overstated. Yet despite this, "hacktivism," or hacking with political
intentions, has preformed actions upon the Mexican government websites, such
as placing a picture of Emiliano Zapata on the home page, and designing a "flood
net" device which effectively denied service to that site for a small
time. The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) is the group which was responsible
for constructing these pranks as a part of their theory of Electronic Civil
Disobedience. Taking from Henry David Thoreau, Ghandi, and Martin Luther King,
they stress non-violent direct action on corporations and governments. They
have organized virtual sit-ins, where as many users assess a site during a
specific period, to disrupt traffic and create a disturbance.
Hacktivism is not strictly the importation of activist techniques into the
digital realm. Rather it is the expression of hacker skills in the form of
electronic direct action …. a distinction is made between hackers engaged
in activism and activists attempting utilize the technical aspects of hacking
to mimic and rationalize traditional forms of activism.
Use of The Internet
The Internet has been at once inescapable and counterproductive in the theory
and practice of culture jamming. It has been a place where ideas of culture
jamming are promoted and jammed material is displayed. Thus there are many
websites devoted to billboard alteration and website spoofs. However, it has
also been a way in which culture jamming can only represent itself within the
society of the spectacle, meaning more people are interested but there actual
engagement in their own communities with the practice is lacking. This kind
of words-not-action is apparent in Adbusters current campaign of "Boycott
America". It encourages people to sign a "statement of values" boycotting
American products, and provides a forum for people to help each other, but
the effectiveness of these current strategies is questionable. More than one
respondent has made the statement "what good does this really do?"
The Scourge of the Underground?
Cultural Activism can succumb to the fetishising of its own possibilities.
We should think carefully through the reasons why people might become attracted,
even though not "involved" in any concrete sense. This is due in
large part to a revolutionary chic that comes with the territory in an image-based, "spectacle" society.
It is summed up nicely on the "Andre the Giant has a Posse" website:
The Giant sticker seems mostly to be embraced by those who are (or at least
want to seem to be) rebellious. Even though these people may not know the meaning
of the sticker, they enjoy its slightly disruptive underground quality and
wish to contribute to the furthering of its humorous and absurd presence which
seems to somehow be antiestablishment/societal convention.
The Giant phenomena, which can be simply described as a stickering campaign
in urban spaces, can give us an insight into the forces at play within cultural
activism. For many, the attraction to "the underground" and the significance
some invest in only being aware of what is happening, in a faddish sort of
way, is cause for caution. It is a wake-up call to many organizations who may
view themselves as being on some sort of vanguard of underground movements
when really just help repeat the representations of being subversive. Yet,
the psychological underpinnings of dissident or pseudo-dissident behavior makes
it an interesting practice to study,
Theory
There has been a particular set of theories associated with culture jamming.
Debord and the Situationalists are probably the most recognizable. Deboard
instituted concept of "the society of spectacle":
The society whose modernization has reached the stage of integrated spectacle
is characterized by the combined effect of five principal factors: incessant
technological renewal, integration of state and economy, generalized secrecy,
unanswerable lies, and eternal present.
The spectator is simply supposed to know nothing and deserves nothing. Those
who are watching to see what happens next will never act and such must be the
spectators condition (qtd in Rich 83).
Debord's integrated spectacle is such that we are in the spectacle, and the
spectacle is in us. An interesting criticism of culture jamming is that it
is in a sense accepting the rules of the game, by counteracting the spectacle
of modern society with another spectacle. This is particularly important in
the "media hoax" type of culture jamming which seeks to disrupt and
expose the "manufactured" nature of news by jamming the news with
fabricated stories.
Another theorist which have gained prominence since culture jamming's inception
is Hakim Bey. He has been credited with the idea of "Temporary Autonomous
Zones (TAZ)” which is the construction and (implicit) destruction of
physical locals of autonomous control which current national systems of control
have not located. Incidentally, Hackim Bey was the object of a culture jam
when a group using the name Luther Blissett published a forged translation
of his book “La Ruota Libera”. This book inserted a fake Bey book
into circulation which parodied the author’s linguistic and conceptual
techniques. Another concept that Culture jamming uses is the term "meme." It
is the way society replicates itself and prohibits new, contradictory ways
of being from growing. A meme is a replicable mental experience which moves
between people; a song lyric, a slogan, or commonplaces. It might be useful
to think of it as ideology writ small, or a "selfish gene" as others
have suggested. There is a large amount of research but for the purposes of
Culture Jamming, it is mostly geared toward the effect of advertising and its
ability to effect societal movements, decisions, trends, etc. It is also important
in the idea of "info war" which is seen as the new space of social
control. Info war is a conflict which takes place over the internet and consists
of protection and security versus the trespassing in which hacking engages.
One thing that has grown out of cultural activism and cultural jamming both
is the landscape of traditional political action has been changed. Increasingly,
groups like the Teamsters are using billboard adbusting to make their point
about union issues (Klein 285). Consumer campaigns against sweatshop labor,
the harmful effects of "big tobacco" and "big food" have
gained prominence since people began looking at the underlying causes of social
ills. The future of the movement is still uncertain. There seems to be a lowering
of people's fascination with what culture jamming has to offer, since it does
not seem to have the ability to move beyond the “beta actions” which
typify billboard jamming, pie slinging, and website hacking. Yet this has the
effect of pushing people to create new, more engaging projects. There is also
the notion that this "info war" is more like a children's game and
that creating "spoofs" and throwing pies in the faces of the elite
is not really dissidence. The proclamations that did not seem plausible in
the late '90s ("[w]e will jam the image factory until the day it comes
to a sudden, shuddering halt" (Lasn xvi)) seem that much more inappropriate
four years later. There does seem to be a growing divide between the different
forms of cultural activism. The low-end/high-end divide seem to becoming more
polarized, and the ability of both to affect real change or significant dialogue
seems in doubt. Since it began, people have been wondering if it will become
subsumed under capitalism. Will Adbusting become a saleable product like all
the others? The amount of corporate-produced subvertising really has not taken-off
as many feared. In one sense, the future will depend on how the Internet plays
itself out, whether it eventually will make this form of dissent unavailable
through its architecture or through law. It also must depend on how the future
of consumerism itself proceeds.
Works cited
Bey, Hakim Temporary Autonomous Zones
Wray, Stefan. Electronic Disturbance Theatre. San Francisco. Autonomedia: 1999.
Andre The Giant Has A Posse website. http://www.obeygiant.com/articles.html
Felshin, Nina. But Is It Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism. Seattle, Bay Press:
1995.
Klein, Naiomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. New York, Picador:
1999.
Rich, Adrienne. What is Found There: Notebooks on Art and Politics. New York,
Norton: 1993
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America™. New York. Morrow:
1999.
Armah, Ayi Kewi Speech, Illinois State University April 15, 2003
Vonnegut, Kurt. Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@. In These Times 27.6 February
17, 2003: 45