Master’s (One Year) Thesis in Media and Communication Studies: Culture, Collaborative Media, and Creative Industries

Getting “Banksied”

Culture Jamming in Practice

Author: Jasmin Salih Supervisor: Temi Odumosu Examiner: Erin Cory Date of Submission: 4, 2019 Word Count: 15,220

Abstract

This paper discusses as the countercultural tool of our current mass media society and argues for a more holistic understanding of the concept in order to open up its subversive potential. Part of this holisitic approach involves emphasizing the role of remediation inherent in the concept. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: to elaborate the diverse techniques involved in culture jamming (as opposed to the common reductionist approaches to the concept) and, more importantly, to highlight the remediation elements imbedded in culture jamming practices. To accomplish this, the works of street artist are taken as a case study and analyzed to answer the following questions: In what ways do the works of street artist Banksy subvert or “jam” culture? And how does remediation come into play in these jamming practices?

Keywords: Banksy; culture jamming; mediation; remediation; street ; subversive practices.

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ______2

LIST OF FIGURES ______4

1. INTRODUCTION______5

2. CONTEXTUALIZATION AND LITERATURE REVIEW ______6

2.1. AND CULTURE JAMMING AS ITS LATEST PRACTICE ______6

2.2. WHY CULTURE JAMMING, WHAT IS IT, AND WHY IS IT RELEVANT NOW? ______8

2.3. PREVIOUS RESEARCH______15

3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ______19

3.1. REMEDIATION______19

3.2. CULTURE JAMMING, DEFINED ______26

4. METHODOLOGY ______27

4.1. RESEARCH QUESTIONS ______27

4.2. RESEARCH PARADIGM ______27

4.3. METHOD ______27

5. CASE STUDY: BANKSY ______28

5.1. BANKSY: THE BASICS ______28

5.2. THE SUBVERSIVE SPACES OF BANKSY______30

6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ______47

7. LIMITATIONS______49

8. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND DISCLAIMER ______50

9. REFERENCES ______51

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List of Figures

Figure 1. Guerilla Girls , The Anatomically Correct Oscar, 2002. Source: https://www.guerrillagirls.com/projects Figure 2. Adbusters issues #145/2019 (left) and #37/2001(right). Source: https://subscribe.adbusters.org/collections/back-issues Figure 3. Banksy’s Designated Area. Source: Banksy, Wall and Piece, p. 52 Figure 4. Selected Banksy works that address the (il)legality of graffiti. Source: http://www.banksy.co.uk/out.asp Figure 5. Banksy’s The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything, 2005. Source: http://www.banksy.co.uk/out.asp Figure 6. Banksy’s Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us with caption. Source: Banksy, Wall and Piece, p. 136–137 Figure 7. Banksy at Tate Britain. Source: Banksy, Wall and Piece, p. 139 Figure 8. Prank at the Louvre, Paris, 2004. Source: https://banksyunofficial.com/category/banksy-pranks/ Figure 9. Banksy’s Elephant in a Room, 2006. Source: https://www.banksy.co.uk/in.asp Figure 10. framed canvas (left); shredded (right). Source: https://www.instagram.com/banksy/?hl=en Figure 11. Banksy’s The street is in play. Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/e7ojjeK-2j/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

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1. Introduction

As long as there is culture, there will always be a counter-culture (or a multitude thereof): a form of opposition—with the desire to trigger positive change—that eventually becomes subsumed into mainstream society, making way for newer forms of opposition to newer forms of culture. While and are eventually subsumed by mainstream culture, I would argue that certain countercultural methods (rather than subversive cultures or groups) are more durable and capable of instigating change. Today’s culture is heavily mediated, a mass media culture; therefore, any form of activism or attempt at subverting mainstream culture will either rely on or target said mediation. Culture jamming has thus risen as the latest form of rebellion. This paper aims to investigate the diverse techniques involved in culture jamming (taking a holistic rather than a reductionist approach to the concept) and, importantly, emphasize the mediation and remediation elements imbedded in culture jamming practices. In order to do so, the paper contextualizes culture jamming and discusses various understandings of the concept and its current social relevance. It then offers a synthesized definition of the concept, joined by a definition and discussion of remediation as a guiding theoretical concept. Street artist and culture jammer Banksy has been chosen as a case study, and in order so fulfill the aim, the paper asks whether and how culture jamming practices manifest themselves in Banksy’s works (to emphasize the variety of practices jamming encompasses) and what role remediation plays in the works. The paper offers a critical visual analysis of selected examples that represent the diverse practices undertaken by Banksy, categorized based on their mediation spaces to support the emphasis on remediation elements involved in the culture jamming practices and the artworks as such. Culture jamming as a specific unified concept has not sufficiently been addressed in research, and existing studies often reduce the concepts to a few practices that minimize its potential and leave it open to criticism. While remediation is generally addressed in relation to , it is not explicitly discussed in relation to culture jamming and its role in aiding countercultural practices is not yet widely or methodologically discussed. These aspects are where this paper hopes to contribute. Further discussions on the relevance of

5 culture jamming as an object of study in the context of media and communication are addressed in the following section.

2. Contextualization and Literature Review

2.1. Counterculture and Culture Jamming as Its Latest Practice While the term counterculture is often used to refer specifically to the youth social movements and subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s in the US and Europe—e.g., the and punk subcultures and the movement—the term can generally be applied to cultures whose values and practices oppose those of the dominant culture (Scott & Marshall, 2009). Arguably, all the subcultures born out of the counterculture of the 1960s have now been absorbed into the mainstream and become highly consumerist (see, e.g., Hebdige, 1979; Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005). Young people now dress up in hippie-style clothing to attend corporate-sponsored festivals like Coachella. DIY culture, the ethic of which is tied to anti-, is more popular than ever and quite profitable on sites like etsy. After the sexual revolution(s), non-marital sex and casual sex are widely accepted, while pornography and explicit sexual content in film in the media have been normalized. While the struggle continues, society has come a long way when it comes to female and LGBTQ+ sexuality. Nothing is quite as controversial or taboo nowadays, and while counterculture is constantly and will always evolve with the times, most countercultural activities generate short-lived attention or shock before becoming a norm, and it is on to the next big thing. In the age of the internet, subcultures are born and die at an even more accelerated pace (Petridis, 2014). However, while countercultural movements dissipate, their vestiges can be seen in the cultural productions they created or provoked. As evidenced by the countercultures of the past, the rejection of the dominant culture often takes place in the (the expression of creativity in the form of literature, visual and decorative arts, music, performance arts, etc.). The values of the counterculture are expressed through art and their representations remain while the culture itself dissolves into the mainstream.

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In their book Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture, Heath and Potter (2004) reject counterculture, arguing it is counterproductive and even supportive of consumer culture or (generally) the systems it opposes. They begin their argument by introducing “culture jamming” as the latest countercultural rebellion. They explain that culture jammers aim to “jam” the culture—which has become “a system of ideology” that reproduces faith in the capitalist system—by subverting the “messages used to reproduce this faith” (e.g., advertisements) and blocking their propagation channels (p.1). The idea behind this thinking goes back to Guy Debeord’s The Society of the Spectacle (1967), in which Debord writes about the lack of “authentic human experience” due to it being hijacked by consumer , commodified, and sold back “through and mass media.” The world is thus no longer real but a “spectacle,” a system of ideology, “of symbols and representations,” alienating us from our “essential nature” (Heath & Potter, 2004, p. 5). Based on this logic, resistance must take the form “cognitive dissonance” and attempts to break the illusion—symbolically through art, acts of protest, clothing or any form of disturbance (p.7). Influenced by Marxist thought, Debord’s idea (later reiterated by Baudrillard among others), is hardly new and similar to ideas presented in Plato’s The Republic or even Rousseau’s work. According to Heath and Potter (2004), the idea of counterculture comes from this line of thought, from resisting the culture that has become “nothing but a system of ideology” and to which mainstream society conforms (p.7). However, Heath and Potter (2004) propose that this theory of society, and the countercultural idea that rests on it, is false; consequently, countercultural movements have failed and will continue to fail. Culture cannot be “jammed” because there is no “culture” or “system” that is all encompassing (p.8). Heath and potter (2004) use Adbusters magazine, which they consider the “flagship” of the culture-jamming movement, as proof there is no “tension” between counterculture and the mainstream or the capitalist system’s ideology—the same goes for all countercultural movements over the past few decades. Just as the of the 60s, for example, did not sell out when they rejected consumerism while they simultaneously consumed “love beads, Birkenstocks, and the VW Beetle,” Adbusters did not sell out when, after establishing itself as a brand, it created its own line of revolutionary running shoes; they did not sell out because the logic behind their politics is 7 and always has been the same as that of , argue Heath and Potter (2004, p.1–4). They did not sell out, nor had they succeeded in their endeavors. Whether Heath and Potter are correct in their view of counterculture (the lack of “culture” to be countered) is not the topic of this paper, but the concept of culture jamming they brought up is—though perhaps not entirely in the way they presented it. In response to some of Heath and Potter’s points, I would argue that Adbusters may indeed have popularized culture jamming, but they do not epitomize it. For instance, Carducci (2006) concedes to Heath and Potter’s (2004) critique that cultural strategies of emancipation end up reinforcing the systems of control they aim to subvert, but he argues that “Culture jamming has the greatest potential to achieve a useful end as a means in service to larger movements rather than as an end in itself” (Carducci, 2006, p. 134). Moreover, culture jamming can remedy certain “market failures” (a term he takes from Heath and Potter)— capitalism and its means-ends rationality that has led to “environmental destruction and exploitation around the globe” (p. 134). To do so, culture jamming “as a cultural, media, and social practice … must be tied to a larger purpose and not be taken as an end in itself” (p. 135). Thus, while Adbusters may not be successful in their attempts to fight the “system,” this paper argues that the tools they use may nevertheless prove to be useful, when looked at from a bigger lens.

2.2. Why Culture Jamming, What Is It, and Why Is It Relevant Now? Back in the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web had just been launched, bringing with it a more rapid growth in mass media, Mark Dery (1993/2010) introduced the term culture jamming in an article for , theorized the concept, and offered it as the answer to a question, a solution to what he saw was a problem:

Reality isn’t what it used to be. … The engines of industrial production have slowed, yielding to a phantasmagoric capitalism that produces intangible commodities—Hollywood blockbusters, television sit-coms, catchphrases, jingles, buzzwords, images, one-minute megatrends, financial transactions flickering through fiberoptic bundles. Our wars are Nintendo wars, fought with camera-equipped smart bombs that marry cinema and weaponry in a television that kills. … Meanwhile, the question remains: How to box with

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shadows? In other words, what shape does an engaged politics assume in an empire of signs?

Culture jamming would be that shape. According to Dery (1993/2010), the “audio-collage” band Negativeland, known for their sociopolitical satire, first used the term “cultural jamming” in their 1984 album JamCon ’84. Negativeland took the idea of “jamming”—a practice by the radio community where they block or disrupt other users’ communication—and applied it to acts of billboard sabotage aimed at critiquing capitalism, race and gender representations in ads, or even government policies, and so on. Dery (1993/2010) took the term, changed it to “culture jamming,” and theorized it based on his background in media and cultural criticism in a New York Times article in 1990—marking the first appearance of the concept in mainstream media. Dery shows the philosophical foundations of the concept—including “Bakhtin’s reading of medieval carnival as symbolic subversion, the Situationist theory of the Spectacle and concomitant practice of détournement, and the Baudrillardian theory of postmodern society as a hyperreality”—and builds on Umberto Eco’s “semiological guerrilla warfare” (coining the term guerilla semiotics) and Stuart Ewen’s “visual literacy” politics. Based on Eco and Ewen, Dery (1993/2010) argues that, in order to reclaim the construction and reconstruction of meaning from marketers (or the capitalist system), the world needs “visually-literate ghostbusters”—AKA culture jammers.

Part artistic terrorists, part vernacular critics, culture jammers, like Eco’s “communications guerrillas,” introduce noise into the signal as it passes from transmitter to receiver, encouraging idiosyncratic, unintended interpretations. Intruding on the intruders, they invest ads, newscasts, and other media artifacts with subversive meanings; simultaneously, they decrypt them, rendering their seductions impotent. Jammers offer irrefutable evidence that the right has no copyright on war waged with incantations and simulations. And, like Ewen’s cultural cryptographers, they refuse the role of passive shoppers, renewing the notion of a public discourse.

Culture jammers, Dery (1993/2010) points out, often employ analytical techniques that he calls “guerilla semiotics”. Whether they do it consciously or not, it is “their ad hoc approach

9 to cultural analysis has much in common with the semiotician’s attempt to ‘read between the lines’ of culture considered as a text.” However, unlike postmodernist theorists and academics who do not step outside theory to engage, culture jammers attempt to reclaim public space from the big producers of mass media culture. Importantly, Dery (2010) adds, there are element of fun and creativity that are integral to culture jamming. Further, the concept has an elasticity that enables it to accommodate different subcultural practices. Any form of media communication carries a jamming potential. Thus, Dery (1993/2010) lists and defines the “many guises” or manifestations of the concept: Sniping and , Media Hoaxing, Audio Agitprop, and Billboard Banditry. The most prevalent form of jamming is subvertising, “the production and dissemination of anti-ads” to counter consumerist advertising (Dery, 1993/2010). According to Dery, this often done through “sniping,” which is “illegal, late-night sneak attacks on public space by operatives armed with , brushes, and buckets of .” Examples of culture jammers who practice these forms are the magazine Adbusters and Guerilla Girls. Media hoaxing is defined by Dery as a “fine art” of creating elaborate, extensively researched and perfected deceptions that garner media attention. Examples include , a media prankster famous for his 1976 stunt Cathouse for Dogs. Audio Agitprop involves using “digital samplers to deconstruct media culture and challenge copyright law,” or agitation propaganda in audio format. Billboard Banditry—define above as it was the phenomenon that inspired the band Negativeland to coin the term “cultural jamming”—has practiced by many jammers and activist groups for decades, for example, the Billboard Liberation Front (active since the late 1970s). However, these categories were identified by Dery in the early 1990s, limited to the technology of the time. While some of his examples continue to be active, more jammers and jamming forms have appeared since.

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Figure 1. Guerilla Girls billboard, The Anatomically Correct Oscar, 2002.

Dery also wrote a few articles about the topic in Adbusters, introducing its editor/publisher to the term. The first article was titled “Subvertising: The Billboard Bandit as Cultural Jammer” (Adbusters, Fall/Winter 1991, Volume 2, Number 1) (Dery, 1993/2010). From then on, Adbusters incorporated the term in its brand and took upon itself to spearhead the culture jamming movement:

We are a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society. (Adbusters.org/)

Kalle Lasn is an activist, filmmaker, editor, and co-founder of Adbusters—a Canadian non- profit organization founded in 1989 that publishes the Adbusters magazine, known for its subvertising as well as creating and promoting as well as initiating the Occupy protest in 2011. Lasn (2000) places culture jamming on a “revolutionary continuum” that includes a multitude of movements and countercultures throughout history: this continuum includes the Dadaist and surrealist movements of the early 20th century, the Situationist International of the 1950s, the hippies of the 1960s, the punk rockers of the 1970s, and all “social agitators ... whose chief aim was to challenge the prevailing ethic” (Lasn, 2000, p. 414). According to Lasn, what all these movements share, “besides a belligerent attitude toward authority,” is their authenticity, the big risks they were (or are) willing to take and their “commitment to the pursuit of small, spontaneous

11 moments of truth” (p. 414). Spontaneity seems to be key for Lasn when it comes to the timeless spirit of defiance against the established order (p. 415).

Figure 2. Adbusters issues #145/2019 (left) and #37/2001(right).

Culture jamming, according to Lasn (2000), is about breaking the patterns of our daily life and shocking us out of our consumer culture. He describes culture jamming as “a metaphor for stopping the flow of spectacle long enough to adjust your set,” something which relies on the “element of surprise” (p. 416). Thus, any time the flow of information from mainstream culture to its audience is interrupted, whether through an individual or mass media act, this act is a culture jamming moment. This is meant to lead to an “awakening” of sorts, hopefully a mass one over time. It is meant to form the beginning of a revolution and to empower more and more people to themselves act and become free through spontaneity (p. 417). In 1999, Lasn went as far as publishing what is generally considered a culture jamming , calling it “the most significant social movement of the next twenty years” (1999/2013, p. xi). The aim of this movement is “to topple existing power structures and forge major adjustments to the way we will live in the twenty-first century. We believe

12 culture jamming will become to our era what civil rights was to the '60s, what was to the '70s, what environmental activism was to the '80s” (p. xi). Despite the bold claims and despite the perseverance of Adbusters and its continued relevance (e.g., initiating the protest in 2011), their understanding and practice is rather limited, and the term culture jamming has largely fallen out of use. Nevertheless, with the rise of new communication technologies and digital revolution, jamming practices in general have not only continued but also evolved. Over the years, other scholars have taken the above definitions and inspected the concept from a variety of perspectives (a few of these are mentioned in the Literature Review below); nevertheless, they do not add to the above but rather reduce it to fit an argument or perspective or define a specific culture jamming example. However, in 2017, media and communication scholars Moritz Fink and Marilyn DeLaure produced an anthology titled Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance (which starts with a reprint of Dery’s 1993 essay along with a selection of essays, case studies, and interviews with artists and activists). They were prompted by the development in mass media communication and saw the need to draw attention to past and current manifestations of culture jamming, as well as its potential in the New Media Age. As one of the anthology’s contributors, Henry Jenkins interviewed Fink and DeLaure on his Weblog to not only contextualize the book but also offer insights into the meaning of the concept and its modern-day manifestations. Fink and DeLaure not only emphasized the continued relevance of culture jamming they also argued (offering examples such as ’s HOPE promoting Barack Obama and Pussy Riot’s protest performances against Putin) that it “has now broadened its scope beyond parody ads and altered . Culture jamming tactics are being used not only to contest consumer culture, but also to intervene in politics and social movements” (Jenkins, 2017). In their interview with Henry Jenkins (2017), Moritz Fink and Marilyn DeLaure offer their definition of the concept:

We see culture jamming as a collection of tactics, as well as a critical attitude and participatory, creative form of activism. Some of these tactics are associated with practices of cultural resistance, such as textual poaching or semiotic

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and resignification. In addition, culture jamming provides more specific terminology suggestive of the concept’s distinct artful as well as bellicose impetus: “détournement,” a French term which evokes the act of turning culture back upon itself, through the appropriation and creative reworking of signs; “subvertisement” which refers to the artistic subversion of advertisements; “semiotic guerilla,” “semiotic jujutsu,” and “meme warfare,” all of which underline the David-versus- Goliath mentality inherent to the concept. Another important element of culture jamming is humor: aping, mocking, parodying, satirizing … in George Orwell’s words, “every joke is a tiny revolution.” Culture jamming is protest art informed by various artistic traditions like Dada, modernist pop art, graffiti, punk rock; there is a performative dimension of culture jamming, too, apparent in forms like pranking, hoaxing, street theater, or flash mobs.

Fink and DeLaure make an important point that “while culture jamming is an expression of resisting the dominant culture, it is also playful and participatory, as many jammers blur the lines of authorship, and thus invite imitation and participation.” They also explain that jamming nowadays is not limited to the literal sense of the word “jamming” as in blocking media channels or wrenching the media machine; rather, it can also involve the “creative coopting and subversive remaking of media content” (Jenkins, 2017). It is clear that they support a less reductive and more comprehensive understanding of the concept as this would make it more relevant in our current social context. From a media and communications studies perspective, Christine Harold (2004), associate professor of communication at the University of Washington, argues for the relevance of culture jamming:

It may be most helpful to take seriously culture jamming … as important components of rhetorical hybrids, collections of tools that activists and scholars can utilize when intervening in the complex world of commercial discourse. (Harold, 2004, p. 209)

In this world where economy is driven by information and marketing in tangent with production of consumer goods, communication is key. Importantly, communication strategies are employed not just for branding and commercialization but their subversive counterparts as well—that is where culture jamming comes in. It is very much and media- and communication practice in all its diverse forms and tactics, and media and communication scholars can learn much about the role of mediation and remediation (as

14 emphasized in this paper) as well as the direction cultural resistance is going by understanding the concept of culture jamming and analyzing its manifestations in culture.

2.3. Previous Research In her essay titled “Pranking rhetoric: “culture jamming” as media activism,” Christine Harold (2004) explores how culture jamming is used as a rhetorical protest strategy. She prefers to focus on “pranking” as a jamming technique and argues that it works best not “through negation and opposition” (performed by parody) but “by playfully appropriating commercial rhetoric both by folding it over on itself and exaggerating its tropes” (p. 189). Harold (2004) begins her essay with an example from Adbusters , citing them as the forefront of “culture jamming,” which she initially defines as “an insurgent political movement” that “seeks to undermine the marketing rhetoric of multinational corporations, specifically through such practices as media hoaxing, corporate sabotage, billboard ‘liberation,’ and trademark infringement” (p. 190). For Harold, ad parodies are the most prevalent form of culture jamming. They “serve as rhetorical x-rays, revealing the ‘true logic’ of advertising … to talk back to the multimedia spectacle of corporate marketing” (p. 190). While Adbusters’ “advertising sabotage” has some rhetorical value, according to Harold, it nevertheless fails to “address the rhetoric of contemporary marketing” (p. 190), since it becomes merely one of many social codes that are as available to capitalists as they are to artists (p. 191). Further, despite its deconstructive quality, parody still maintains the rhetorical binaries it is attempting to upset. Adbusters’ readers are as frustrated at “being told what is best” by Adbusters as they are by advertisers. Thus, parody is limited by the fact that it can also be (and is) used by marketers; it is also limited by its inability to do more than react, without offering alternatives (p.192). Having critiques parody as a jamming form, Harold (2004) moves on to offer an jamming technique: pranking. The prankster, she explains, “resists less through negating and opposing dominant rhetorics than by playfully and provocatively folding existing cultural forms in on themselves,” performing an art of rhetorical jujitsu “to redirect the resources of commercial media toward new ends” (p. 191).

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Basing her conceptualization on Foucault and Deleuze, Harold states that contemporary capitalism has shifted from “discipline” to “control”—a shift that is marked by stepping away from the political rhetoric of the nation-state and towards the rhetoric of consumerism proliferating today. Consequently, this shift has also resulted in shifting the possibilities for political protest (pp. 193–194). Harold tentatively associates resistance through sabotage with the logic of disciplinarity and resistance through appropriation with the logic of control (p. 194). Harold’s (2004) culture jammers of choice, the media pranksters, “prefer affirmation and appropriation to opposition and sabotage.” She continues,

Whereas the culture jammer as saboteur opposes commercialism through revelatory rhetoric such as parody, pranksters can be seen as comedians, as playful explorers of the commercial media landscape. (p. 194)

Harold derives alternative understandings of the word “prank” that are essential for her discussion of culture jamming. In one sense, a prank is a “stylistic exaggeration” or “an augmentation of dominant modes of communication that interrupts their conventional patterns.” In another sense, a prank is “a fold” that “can render a qualitative change by turning and doubling a material or text [or mass-mediated rhetoric] … through reconfiguration of the object itself” (p. 196). Jamming, Harold adds, requires “knowledge of one’s instrument”—knowledge of the medium one is working with in order to “fold” it over itself. Going back to Skaggs, Harold argues, “Skaggs’s strategies do not oppose dominant modes of power; they utilize them” (p. 197). Jamming involves appropriation of existing art and producing a new interpretation, one that will contain “familiar textual residues” but that does not need to correspond to the original or successfully represent it. Moreover, unlike other rhetorics of protest (like sabotage that attempts to “clog” the machine), pranking takes branding logic seriously and “repatterns” it by utilizing media affordances: “Culture jamming multiplies the tools of intervention for contemporary media and consumer activists. It does so by embracing the viral character of communication, a quality long understood by marketers” (p. 208).

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Harold’s article is relevant to the present study in more than one aspect. First, the above reinforces my argument for the need for a holistic approach to culture jamming. Revisiting the definition of culture jamming, Harold later admits it need not be viewed merely as the “monkey-wrenching” of corporate media implied by Adbusters’ images. “Rather, it may be more useful to consider jamming as an artful proliferation of messages, a rhetorical process of intervention and invention, which challenges the ability of corporate discourses to make meaning in predictable ways” (p. 192). As Harold herself demonstrates, one technique opens itself to criticism while another shows more potential. However, when taken in combination, along with other jamming techniques, they offer more subversive potential. Second, through her chosen examples, Harold shows how jammers (or prankers) preform their “political jujitsu” by using the media and its strategies to their own ends. Thus, while not explicitly stated by her, I would argue that Harold touches upon the remediatory aspects of culture jamming when she highlights appropriation and even parody. Vince Carducci (2006) looks at culture jamming from a sociological perspective. Rooting it in the expressivist tradition and its quest for authenticity, Carducci sees culture jamming as an attempt to make transparent the communication apparatus of late modernity. Carducci (2006) states that culture jamming is a media practice that “directly confronts the authority of corporate representation”—the specific words and images and their meanings circulating in (consumerist) society (p. 125). Based on Marxist-influenced media theories, Carducci argues that individual emancipation in late modernity requires an “awakening” through the deconstruction of the commodity-sign system, which can be achieved through culture jamming (p. 126). Importantly, Carducci (2006) also briefly addresses the remediatory aspect in jamming, stating that culture jamming “effectively remediates the system of and the communications mechanism through which it operates” (p. 127). Carducci uses Dery and Lasn’s definitions (p. 119) and argues that postmodern consumers are enabled to see through the brand veneer by the culture jammers (p. 122). But they remain consumers nonetheless, and “the accommodation by commerce to rebellious expressive individualism within the postmodern consumer paradigm takes place as a matter of course” (p. 123), as maintained by Heath and Potter (2004). Carducci cites 17

Heath and Potter (2004) among others who suggest that “resistance to one form of consumption often takes the form of another” (Adbusters being the prime example) (Carducci, 2006, p. 125). Again, I would like to emphasize how prevalent the narrow view of culture jamming offered by Adbusters and how it opens itself up to critique. This is further elaborated and shown as problematic as Carducci (2006, pp. 132–133) discusses culture jamming’s social aspect—how it is not a movement in itself but a media-based social practice that lends itself to socio-political movements. His use of Adbusters throughout this discussion emphasizes how the magazine and the community of jammers around it mimic the characteristics of a social movement as he claims that culture jamming is “can be seen as a movement.” Simultaneously, he argues it is also “a technique in the same way that cubism or dada are both movements in the history of, and techniques for making, art” (p. 134). For myself as a reader, the lines seem blurred in Carducci’s argument as he moves from discussing Adbusters as the epitome of culture jamming and then giving examples of jammers who perform hoaxes (such as ) where it serves his point. While they all in fact practice culture jamming (albeit in different ways), they cannot then serve as a collective that fits into his culture jamming-as-a-social-movement argument: the Yes Men are not part of the Adbusters magazine or media foundation. Thus, the aim of this paper to address a more comprehensive definition of culture jamming is yet again validated. The research on street art is, of course, relevant somewhat in conjunction with culture jamming but more so for its immediate relation to the chosen case study (street artist Banksy). Some studies discuss Banksy as a culture jammer (e.g., Harzman, 2015; other studies mention Banksy as one of many examples) or, if not explicitly as culture jamming, at least analyze some of his work as subversive or countercultural tactics (e.g., Gough, 2016). However, no study fully discusses his body of work in relation to culture jamming practices, which leaves room to question whether only some of his works fall into that category. Further, some studies connect détournement—the root of culture jamming practices—with graffiti and street art, for example Schacter (2008) and McGaw (2008). This is not unexpected as Debord and the Situationists themselves used graffiti (writings on walls) as part of their practice (Stracey, 2014). However, while they may touch upon the role of remediation in street art (as can be seen in the next section), not many explicitly 18 address it in relation to culture jamming practices. These discussions on street art in relation to remediation may be applicable to culture jams when it comes to the similarities they share with street art, but certain benefits or drawback may work differently in aspects where street art and culture jamming works differ (not all street art is a culture jam and vice versa). This study looks into where the three concepts converge—looking at culture jamming’s diverse practices through the lens of remediation using street art as an example.

3. Theoretical Framework

This section presents Bolter and Grusin’s (1999/2000) definition and discussion of remediation. The concept will guide the analysis of culture jamming practices as they manifest themselves in the chosen case study. Therefore, further discussions on remediation of street art are presented as they are relevant to the analysis. This is followed by a synthesis of the previously mentioned definitions of culture jamming in order to offer a more holistic definition, presenting the concept as a useful subversive tool and allowing the forthcoming analysis to showcase the mediation and remediation at play in culture jamming’s different manifestations.

3.1. Remediation Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) define a medium as “that which remediates. It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real” (p.65). Further, they argue that no medium in our culture operates in isolation from other media. “Respect and rivalry” are always relationships at work between today’s media, so much so that a medium’s representational power is not recognizable “except with reference to other media” (p.65). Remediation employs two strategies: immediacy and hypermediacy. According to Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000), “attempts to achieve immediacy by ignoring or denying the presence of the medium and the act of mediation” have existed hundreds of years before the introduction of digital media. The goal of these attempts is “to put the viewer in the same space as the objects viewed” (p.11). For Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000),

19 immediacy in the epistemological sense means transparency, “the absence of mediation or representation.” It refers to the idea that the medium could disappear and leave the viewer in the direct presence of the represented object. In the psychological sense, it refers to the “feeling” that the medium is absent, the feeling of authentic experience (p.70). Meanwhile, hypermediacy epistemologically means “opacity—the fact that knowledge of the world comes to us through media.” Thus, the viewer recognizes the presence of the medium, learns about mediation, and accepts that their learning is performed through acts of mediation. Hypermediacy’s psychological sense then is the “experience” of the view not only of the presence of media but also in that presence: “it is the insistence that the experience of the medium is itself an experience of the real” (pp. 70–71). The two logics or strategies then come together in their (socially-constructed) “appeal to authenticity of experience” (p. 71). Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) argue that “all current media function as remediators” in contemporary culture but that this “double logic” functions in varying degrees and levels. They describe remediation in the following three ways: (a) as “the mediation of mediation,” emphasizing the dependency of media on each other to function a media; (b) as inseparable from reality, inasmuch as all mediations are real because “all media remediate the real”; and (c) as “reform” in the sense that it serves to “rehabilitate other media” and even reform reality (pp. 55–56). The first two points express that there is “nothing prior to mediation” in our visual culture; all acts of mediation are remediations because they are depended on other acts of mediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999/2000, p.56). These acts also challenge older media through remediation (p.57). Media are “real” as objects circulating in the world and as (re)mediations of “the real” (pp. 58–59). Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) use the concept remediation to express a cultural view of how one medium reforms or improves upon another (p.59). There was an argument that digitizing older media, for instance, will “motivate and liberate” viewers, provide convenience and reliability, and allow for more interaction (all of which is perhaps evident nowadays, twenty years post Bolter and Grusin’s moment of writing). Accordingly, there is an expectation on any new medium to improve its predecessor—that is, to fill some sort of lack or repair a fault. The inadequacy of the older forms, Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) 20 argue, is the “lack of immediacy” that new media then fulfill as the “rhetoric of remediation favors immediacy and transparency” (p. 60). Social and political reform are also implied in the reformative function of remediation, for instance, in the sense of “direct, ‘digital’ democracy” as well as in overthrowing the “hierarchical control” of older forms (p.60). New representation technologies reform (i.e., remediate) earlier ones, while earlier technologies attempt to maintain legitimacy through remediating new ones. The former remediation accomplishes social change, according to all the “cyberenthusiasts” (p.61). A third sense of reform deals with reforming “reality itself,” not the mere “appearance of reality”—through offering an alternative version, an improvement on the “flawed” ordinary version of reality (p.61). It may be worth noting here that Bolter and Grusin do not support theories of technological determinism; rather, they see digital media as both “material artifacts and social constructions” simultaneously and see no reason to focus on cause or effect. Cities are “media spaces” as they are the locations of our culture’s media: cities have libraries, museums, theatres, etc. Much like an amusement park, the city is a highly mediated space (p.173). Furthermore, Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) use Marc Augé’s concept of “non-places” (spaces that are “detached” and “not themselves anthropological”) to describe certain mediated places such as malls, airports, and amusement parks, and point out how these nonplaces function as public spaces during certain hours and then “seem drained of meaning” during closing hours. However, these nonplaces offer an experience of the reality of mediation. Bolter and Grusin argue that cyberspace is one of those nonplaces. They see Cyberspace not as a parallel world or an escape from the physical one but as a mediated space that is part of the “contemporary networks of transportation, communication, and economic exchange” (p.179). Cyberspace is part of our material world and “is constituted through a series of remediations”: it is a digital network (remediating older electric communications networks like the telephone), a virtual reality (remediating visual spaces such as film and television as well as ), and a social space (remediating placed both historical, i.e., cities, and nonplaces) (p.183). When discussion the World Wide Web, Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) point out its inclusivity and ability to “borrow from and remediate almost any visual and verbal medium” as well as its constant “promise of immediacy through the flexibility and liveness” of its networked communication (p.197). They point to different remediation “strategies”: 21 respectful remediation that highlights other (venerable) media without criticizing them, thereby fulfilling “an archival function”; or radical remediation such as hypermediation that improves upon, for instance, older printed versions and adds transparency as well as economic improvement through cheaper modes of communication (200–204).

3.1.1. Remediation of Street art Art is in constant dialogue with its public, over different media, through various –isms, about themes of culture and human condition. This conversation has nowadays transitioned from the street and art institutions (e.g., the gallery and the museum) into a digital interface. Through its different interfaces (the wall and the digital world), Werthmann (2015) explores street art’s remediation and dialogism. She starts by pointing out that contemporary art generally involves “previous understanding and appropriations” to resonate with its viewer. Street art, as a form of contemporary art, “pulls from previous art structures to acknowledge their existence and react or engage in the overall meaning of different messages with a type of cognitive discourse on specific interfaces to maintain itself within the boundaries of the art world” (p.1). Werthmann (2015) argues, environment is an important structure for street art— specifically, the wall, the street, the city, as well as the digital experience: “The environment structure is a platform or interface where the art is held, but is also part of the art concerning its cultural, social, and political implications through the web, mass media, or urban city” (p. 3). Werthmann also explains that each act of street art creation is a form of dialogue, a response or engagement with previous art and expressions of meaning—street artists (like Banksy and Parla) engage with other contemporary artists (the likes of Warhol, Rauschenberg, etc.) and participate in the conversation in pop culture, mass media, socio- political aspects, the nature of the artistic medium, and so on. Werthmann’s points are relevant to the paper when analyzing the works in the case study for their remediation properties—when we start discussing the environment as a medium that mediates and also remediates. Also, this aforementioned conversation, as I understand it, is connected to appropriation and thus relevant to jamming and its remediation characteristic.

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Street art remediates institutionalized art forms and take the conversation outside museum and gallery walls. Street artists incorporate or appropriate into their work the techniques and concepts of previous isms in art history while also creating and adding new “codes” to the conversation, Werthmann (2015) explains. She understands this as a “” that demands engagement and response from the art world, be it positive or negative (p. 7). And street artists remixed codes used by previous artists to join and add to the conversation. Through a process of production and reproduction, it also led to the absorption of new codes into art discourse until they become “natural” to the viewer and also “helped introduce street art as a legitimate art form through its adaptation and production of discourse with a different visual landscape/interface” (p. 7). It seems Werthmann is attributing street art’s rise from a peripheral into the mainstream to its remediation (in the sense of appropriation). She also attributes its increased publicness and proliferation to remediation as digitization. The ephemeral nature of art on the street has provoked different forms of documentation, specifically digital ones, argues Werthmann. The digital interface gives the artworks permanence and also opens up street art to the mass public; further, this accessibility “afforded to the artists, helped to grow and maintain the symbolic function of the messages through new media forums such as video, text, and web pages” (p. 8). Digital affordances also allow the documentation and exposure of the artworks’ creation process, allowing viewers to appreciate the artist and further “understand the meaning of the sign to ascertain the message” (p. 9). While the wall as an interface gave street artists visibility, the digital interface nowadays is giving them more visibility:

[M]ore art is being transformed for an internet viewership that has opened up a new interface outside museums, galleries, and even the streets; it helps enable art become global. Currently, the internet is providing a new interface of remediated art through search engines. (Werthmann, 2015, p. 9)

Gralińska-Toborek (2017) points out that the internet is the primary source through which most street art aficionados know the artwork of their favorite artists, “not only because this

23 kind of art is ephemeral or not easily accessible … but because it is perhaps the best documented art that has been created in the world” (p. 99). Street art was meant to break the institution barrier and be physically accessible to the viewer, but according to Gralińska-Toborek (2017), it has managed to do so virtually as well (or perhaps instead) (p.99). Gralińska-Toborek (2017) offers some potential drawbacks to remediation of street art as she discusses how images of street art are preserved by viewers through photographs, often ignoring their place (p. 103). In the same way that images of places make these places “unreal” and remembered by people as images, images of street art suffer in a similar manner: “A photo of a work of street art associated with a particular site loses the specificity of the work itself (its medium, size, or non-visual qualities) as well as of the place itself (which has its own spatial, polysensory, functional and temporal characteristics)” (p. 104). The reproduction and duplication of these images is even more problematic because it often is the only way we know these images—through reproductions. Referring to Walter Benjamin’s argument on art works losing their “aura” and attracting mass consumers, Gralińska-Toborek (2017) argues street art is similarly losing its aura. She concludes that the preservation of graffiti and street art popularizes the artworks themselves, not their physical places, and is further a career-building tool for their creators. Simultaneously, “publishing this ‘image documentation’ on the Internet is a way of creating virtual sites for viewing art.” There is no need for audiences to see live works (which may no longer even exist in their real physical space), and the competition between artists over optimal spaces is diminished as some “completely move into the virtual realm” (p. 107). When street art is transferred from urban walls to the internet, this change occurs through the use of a new medium. “In the real world, the media of street art are paint, paper, and various type of graphics, in the virtual world the media are digitised photos, films and finally the Web itself.” Remediation follows. While the average consumer sees this as “only a method of distributing, preserving and documenting images,” Gralińska-Toborek (2017) reminds “that this process involves modification and adaptation of works as such”

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(p. 107–108). She explains, the viewer’s aesthetic experience and their reception of the work also changes because it is largely determined by the medium. “I’d Double Tap That!!”: street art, graffiti, and Instagram research” keeps the conversation going with the theme of remediation of street art and graffiti in social media. Veering off the current scholarly trend in social media research of focusing and Facebook, MacDowall and de Souza (2018) decided to shift the focus to Instagram and its role in shaping social practices with regards to street art and graffiti—specifically, “the ways in which the production and consumption of forms of street art and graffiti are increasingly shaped by the architectures, protocols, and uses of Instagram.” Instagram is characterized by a shift from textual media to not only visual but also numerical economies. The quantification, for instance, of number of followers and likes, offers some measure of an artist’s popularity—as do tags: “They function as contextual keywords attached to an object of information in social media that in aggregate can serve as indicators of collective interest” (p. 17). Yet the ranking and quantification offered is not simple or direct, which leaves room for research to come up with interesting ways of interpreting the data. The perfect example of Instagaram data analysis is performed on this paper’s case study, Banksy. In their study of the relation between physical places and their social media representations and hyper-locality in social media, Hochman, Manovich, and Yazdani (2014) use Banksy’s month-long residency in NYC (October 2013) as a case study. They analyze and visualize Instagram photos of Banksy’s NY artworks to explore how they add meaning to their originals and how they represent space- and time-specific events. Hochman et al. (2014) went through Instagram photos and metadata, selecting photos tagged #banksyny shared from October 1, 2013 to November 20, 2013 and those tagged #banksy shared in October 2013 geotagged to the NYC area. They visualized their data and identified key characteristics of the hyper-local social media data: They are (1) fragmented, “a representation of fragmented performances and exhibitions from multiple perspectives and times”; (2) temporalized, offering “a sequence of representations of time within a space”; and (3) nomadic, their spread transcending “the original boundaries of that place into other locations globally (p. 9).

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3.2. Culture Jamming, Defined Taken literally, culture jamming is the “jamming” of culture—culture being the mass mediated all-encompassing characteristics and norms of our modern society. According to the OED, to jam is,

a. “To cause the fixing or wedging of (some movable part of a machine) so that it cannot work; to render (a machine, gun, etc.) unworkable, by such wedging, sticking, or displacement.” c. “To cause interference with (radio or radar signals) so as to render them unintelligible or useless, esp. deliberately; to prevent reception of (a transmitter or station) by such means.”

Thus, the concept offers the promise of subverting mainstream culture and rendering its capitalist machine unworkable, if for a short moment. It also carries a communicative essence. Further, to avoid having too broad a concept, Fink and DeLaure (as cited in Jenkins, 2017) narrow down their (above stated) definition of culture jamming into eight key characteristics that map what it does rather than what it is: “it appropriates, operates serially, and is artful, playful, (often) , participatory, political, and transgressive.” These characteristics, taken together with the definitions offered in the previous section culminate in the following understanding of the concept: In sum, culture jamming is the multitude of practices that involve creative acts of (re)mediation and appropriation (both of media artefacts and of space) and that intervene in culture to make visible, subvert, or rework its meanings and signs; they offer a (temporary) break in the dominant pattern; they can be textual, visual, or performative; they involve humor and playfulness, and they are often anonymous and unsanctioned. Culture jamming is not a social movement (despite Lasn’s proclamations) and does not embody a specific culture; while the critical attitude and transgressive nature of its practices makes them inherently political, the concept does not necessarily carry a specific inherent socio- political ideology—rather, it is the cultural jammers themselves that bring in their own ethos to their work, as well as the cultural context (while capitalist or consumerist messages permeate culture, culture jamming has often been and is most likely to be anti- capitalist). I would also add an important aspect that does not seem to be explicitly stated in any definition, but is mentioned by Mark Dery in his description of jamming manifestations,

26 is that culture jamming is made in public spaces. This aspect relates it to street art as well as to the immediacy involved in remediation.

4. Methodology

4.1. Research Questions Having defined what culture jamming is and how it operates, I will now attempt to answer the following questions:  In what ways do the works of street artist Banksy subvert or “jam” culture? In other words, how do the defining characteristics of culture jamming manifest in Banksy’s work?  How does remediation come into play in these jamming practices?

4.2. Research Paradigm Research paradigms are the “broad philosophical and theoretical traditions” within which researchers attempt to understand their social world, and they depend on how the researcher looks at the world and how he or she understands it (Blaike, 2009, p. 3). The topic and context of this study relates to power structures of communication, the repressive elements of mediated culture, and how we can change them. Accordingly, this study veers from the classical paradigms (e.g., positivism, interpritivism) and is more in line with the contemporary paradigm of critical theory. The concept of culture jamming and the understanding of culture that requires it as a counter measure are rooted in Marxist theory.

4.3. Method In order to highlight the diversity of culture jamming practices and analyze how they centralize remediation, I use the street artist Banksy as a case study. Banksy is a compelling example for several reasons. First, he is acknowledged by researchers as a culture jammer. Second, there is diversity in his artistic practice that I argue exemplifies the expanded understanding of culture jamming. 27

Using a combination of critical theory and visual analysis, I will look at the context and content of the selected sample and discuss it using the concepts presented in the theoretical framework section (i.e., culture jamming and remediation). The analysis is thus guided by the critical visual methodology offered by Rose (2001), looking mainly at the sites and the technological (relating to the various media, e.g., art, the internet) and social (i.e., the range of economic, social, and political relations, institutions and practices that surround an image”) modalities (p. 17). I will analyze the study sample in relation to the definitions of culture jamming and remediation presented in the previous section. In order to best answer the research question, the present study takes a qualitative approach and employs a non-probability sampling strategy of purposive sampling as follows. Considering the vastness of Banksy’s oeuvre at this point, as well as the redundancy of including all of it for the purpose of this study, I have looked into what he has produced over the years and divided his work into mediation categories. This will help showcase both the diverse culture jamming practices and the mediation/remediation aspect. I then selected a few representative examples to be discussed for each category. The images selected to illustrate the examples are all clearly referenced in the Table of Figures as this aspect was emphasized by Rose (2001, p. 31). Thus, as a way of categorizing the works selected for analysis, I decided to use the different mediation spaces or “walls” (physical and virtual) that Banksy utilizes to mediate his work: Urban walls, Museum walls, Non-walls, Private walls, and Virtual walls.

5. Case Study: Banksy

5.1. Banksy: The Basics In their annual issue, TIME magazine names the people they believe have been most influential that year. In 2010, Banksy made the cut. The photo he sent them was of a man (presumably himself) wearing a (recyclable) paper bag over his head. The article on Banksy for that issue was written by fellow street artist, activist, and illustrator Shepard Fairey (the man behind OBEY and the 2008 Obama Hope poster). Fairey (2010) described Banksy’s work as “over the line between aesthetics and language.” Banksy “has a

28 gift: an ability to make almost anyone very uncomfortable. He doesn't ignore boundaries; he crosses them to prove their irrelevance,” states Fairey (2010). More importantly, what makes Banksy’s work special is its accessibility, the fact that is meant to be “public.” Though there are speculations and attempts to unmask him, Banksy’s identity remains the best kept secret in the (street)art world. The is necessary due to the illegal nature of most of his work, but it is also part of his allure. While his personal identity is a mystery, his career is not. Banksy began his career in graffiti already in the 1990s in . He soon transitioned from graffiti to stencil art; there are many stories that have the same theme: He was bad at graffiti and slow. offered an efficient and powerful alternative. On making the leap from graffiti to stencil art, Ellsworth-Jones (2012) points out, “It was much more than just a change of style; he risked banishment from the strong subculture that was part of the lure of graffiti” (p.58). Frowned upon by graffiti writers he may be, Banksy took to stenciling and over the years developed his style and distinctive iconography, making a name for himself and paving the way for graffiti and street artists alike. Eva Branscome (2011) proposes that Banksy “turns today’s cities and streets into galleries and, by contrast, transforms museums into shrines of pop culture and commentary on the art market,” thereby subverting the status of both the street and the gallery (p. 116). Cultural criticism, art, or ?—placing graffiti and street art has become problematic. And so is placing Banksy. Branscome (2011) argues that Banksy has “opened up the genre of ‘high-street irony’, playing with words and images. The pieces are disarmingly funny and that is key to Banksy’s success” (p. 116). She further reviews the man himself on his “carefully positioned” persona/brand, the clearly educated mind that provides sophisticated narratives and art world references, the control of his anonymity, and his market savvy (p. 119). Importantly, when discussing Banksy, we cannot disregard the contradictions that arise. Branscome (2011) also notes the social contradiction that has come about: Banksy’s interventions on the street have put pressure on the art institutions (collectors, galleries, and museums). On the other hand, “Banksy’s walls are now often legally sanctioned” (p. 119). When an image appears, it is recorded and photographed and treated much like a tourist attraction; prints of the pieces are made and sold. The monetary aspect alone may 29 imply an underlying cynicism, but this is then countered with his social critique of art or politics. Branscome describes Banksy’s method as “subversion from within.” However, she emphasizes his hybridity: both subverting and being complicit with the system (p. 121). Banksy’s projects—be they artworks on the walls of different cities around the word, exhibitions, temporary “theme parks,” and the list goes on—always receive news coverage. The sale of his pieces at auctions keep receiving higher figures. As his works gained popularity and caught the eyes of art investors, money began to reach Banksy himself, not just those who sell his works. This led to more, bigger, projects. It also led to both more praise and criticism. He is acknowledged as a culture jammer (e.g., Harzman, 2015), yet he is also accused of being a “reluctant” capitalist or complicit with the system (e.g., Ellsworth-Jones, 2012; Branscome, 2011). However, the contradiction makes him an interesting object of study. For one thing, no study fully discusses his body of work in relation to culture jamming practices, which leaves room to question whether only some of his works fall into that category. For another, the seeming contradiction further indicates the distinction between seeing culture jamming as a movement or as a purely anti-capitalist tactic and seeing it as collective of tactics with a culturally-subversive function. In this regard, I would argue that the latter applies in Banksy’s case; further, while Banksy’s works are anti-consumerist on the surface level, they are more anti-art-as-an-institution and subversive of said intuition. The jamming is then of institutionalized art.

The following subsection offers a selection of Banksy’s works, analyzed through the lens of remediation and the defining characteristics of culture jamming. As previously mentioned, they are categorized by their mediation spaces.

5.2. The Subversive Spaces of Banksy 5.2.1. Urban Walls As a street artist, rooted in graffiti subculture, Banksy’s work is composed of mostly (unsanctioned) stencil art displayed in public space: on the city walls of Bristol, London, New York, and even the West Bank, among other places. “A wall has always been the best

30 place to publish your work,” states Banksy (Banksy (2005/2007, p.8). Already the choice of the city wall as a medium relates to the aspects of transgressing on and reclaiming of public space. Schacter (2008) argues that “as the embodied artist undertaking the act of graffiti is also intrinsically an artist engaged in a criminal act, one can not view the image without perceiving this inherent illegality” (p. 39). Monaco (2002) argues that the placement of street art is “crucial for the artist to be able to communicate symbolically, politically, and artistically to an audience” (p. 11). Factors affecting placement include the size of the artwork, who the target audience is, and how the piece affects its environment.

[F]or Banksy and other street artists like him, it is all about the public…. They are painting the same walls as a graffiti artist but they are producing images which are instantly understandable – a gallery on the street that is inclusive rather than exclusive. The image can be pure humour or or both, but every passer-by gets the joke. (Ellsworth-Jones, 2012, p. 38)

Taking away the legitimizing setting of the gallery or the museum puts the viewer in a unique position: They no longer expected to appreciate a work because it has already been given institutional approval, and they can judge the artwork based on its own merit. Since the viewer does not go into a space with the intention of viewing art, the street artist (as well as the subvertising culture jammer) has to create art that makes an impression and choose a location that best delivers their desired effect (Lewisohn, 2008, p. 116). The use of the wall as a medium of interfaces is also relevant to the conversation on remediation. Location-specific interfaces affect how the work and viewer engage with the larger thematic issues (philosophica, social, political, etc.)—for instance, as a result of the collapse of space and time between the art and its viewer (Bochner as cited in Werthmann, 2015, p. 7). Werthmann argues that the visual vocabulary and stylistic registers now instantly recognizable to the viewer throughout mass culture could not have been so without “the wall” as an interface. This interface provides visibility, allowing the artist to “spread their message” while also “incorporating their environment into the work” (Werthmann, 2015, p. 7–8). The wall itself as a medium that achieves what Bolter and Grusen (1999/2000) consider a remediation strategy—immediacy. It does so by putting the viewer “in the same pace as the object viewed” (Bolter and Grusin, 1999/2000, p. 11). 31

The walls paradoxically (or not so paradoxically for Bolter and Grusin) also fulfill hypermediacy in that the presence of the medium (the wall) is acknowledged by the viewer and accepted as part of their experience of the (re)mediated image. Urban walls are his canvas, Banksy uses stencils and aerosol cans his media. Here too we see jamming and remediation before we even look at the content of the image. On his choice of stencils, Banksy has said,

I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars. Even a picture of a rabbit playing a piano looks hard as a stencil. (Ellsworth-Jones, 2012, p. 54)

In , Tristan Manco (2002) explains that a stencil, one of the earliest art techniques, “is essentially a template which can be painted through with a paint-brush or spray-paint” (p. 7). Monaco also refers to the association between stencils and rebellion, as they fit, for instance, the DIY attitude of the punk movement and the utilitarian style that “punk appropriated to subvert symbols of authority” (p. 13). An important stylistic feature of stencil art is related to immediacy. Immediacy, according to Manco (2002) is “part of the general compositional over-layering” (p. 15): “the image is integrated with the texture of the street” (Fairy as cited in Manco, 2002, p.15). Thus, before even addressing the textual and visual aspects of a Banksy art piece, the choice of technique is already telling. Stencils are also a common techniques nowadays used by, for example, fashion brands and by advertisers and has thus become a familiar part of culture. Using it can be argued to be both rebellious (based on its history) and also a reappropriation of a now common cultural communication tool. A Banksy example of this would be his parodying of “functional stencils” or public lettering similar to that used by official city authorities to communicate information (see Figure 3). Banksy’s notice stated, “By order / National Highways Agency / This wall is a designated / graffiti area / Please Take Your Litter Home.” This particular stencil piece was replicated on different walls in different places. Some of the walls were soon covered in graffiti, accepting the open invitation for participation (Banksy, 2005/2007, pp. 52–54). Another one of these (in Shoreditch) is now protected by a Perspex cover (Pilgrim, 2019), preventing further graffiti intervention on the space. These examples are culture jams in

32 that they not only intrude on public walls with an illegal painted text that is a reappropriation of official communication, but they also have an element of humor and subversiveness in their blatant disregard for authority and they invite participation—traits emphasized by Dery and Fink and DeLaure in their definitions of culture jamming. They can also be seen as a sort of prank (a strategy favored by Harold, 2004), on city officials or other graffiti artists or even both.

Figure 3. Designated Graffiti Area

Now we are delving into the content of the work. Here, Werthmann’s (2015) observations about how street art’s (or contemporary art generally) ability to resonate with the viewer depends on “previous understandings and appropriations throughout time” (p. 1).

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Figure 4. Selected Banksy works that address the (il)legality of graffiti.

The two artworks in Figure 4 exemplify the jamming characteristics of creativity and playfulness while they reflect the illegal nature of their existence. These pieces are a direct criticism of laws against graffiti. The image on the left, from 2011, combines a stencil image (one of Banksy’s iconic ) and painted text. The text, in red, is a textual appropriation as it is a play on the quote “If voting ever changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” attributed to feminist anarchist and activist Emma Goldman. A stenciled is standing in the corner below the text, (literally and figuratively) red handed—yet another appeal to the reader’s previous semiotic understandings and familiarity. The rat is also a common figure in Banksy’s works. Perhaps a nod to , one of Banksy’s early artistic inspirations and, thus, a sign of appropriation and remediation. The rat can also be interpreted “as a symbol for the regenerative nature of street art—despite massive efforts by city governments to remove graffiti, a fresh wall won’t stay that way for long before new tags appear” (Artsy, 2018). The piece on the right is from 2013, and it was the first piece Banksy made during his “residency” in . The photo was posted on Instagram with the caption, “The street is in play / 2013 / #banksyny” (Banksy, 2013). Another simple stencil that uses black and white with some red and shows two boys, one standing on the other’s back to reach for the spray can inside an official “Graffiti is a Crime” sign. While remediation is already implied in the image being stenciled (thus made through one medium and imposed on another), it is also indicated through immediacy within the image. There is a questioning of the image vs. the real as the boy in the image reaches into the

34 image of a sign. The image also connotes youthful rebellion and disregard for authority. Like most of Banksy’s work, neither piece is signed by Banksy and confirmed only through the artist’s webpage (through his handling service, Pest Control) and Instagram. These pieces are both, as Fink and DeLaure would describe a culture jam, “artful, playful, (often) anonymous, … political, and transgressive” (as cited in Jenkins 2017).

Figure 5. Banksy’s The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything, 2005.

Another Banksy political and transgressive work is the one titled The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything. The work (shown in Figure 5) is made with only black spray paint writing on an empty billboard. The clear black lettering straightforwardly delivers the message. This appropriation of the billboard is a remediation as it takes the original medium away from its original context while it remains in place and re-functions it to perform the opposite of its purpose. Instead of reforming through a new medium (as Bolter and Grusin discuss), we have a reform of the same medium. It is a clear and direct dig at advertising, its placement and presentation mimicking that of an advertisement but carrying a contrary message. This is a culture jam in the “subvertising” sense, but instead of sabotaging a specific ad, it critiques the notion of advertising itself and its intervention/infection of public spaces. This would playfully surprise the viewer and invite them to question being so accustomed to ads. Culture jamming carries an anti-capitalist spirit within, and jammers often attack the

35 rhetoric of consumerism and advertising. Graffiti and street artists in particular are also at odds with advertising as they both share a medium of communication, except the former group’s work is illegal mainly to accommodate the latter’s infringement on public space for the sake of capitalist gains: “The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff” (Banksy, 2005/2007, p. 8). A contradiction occurs if one considers that the artists are also advertising themselves as a brand or their art as a product.

5.2.2. Museum Walls In October 2003, Banksy walked into Tate Britain, picked a space on a wall in one of the galleries, and claimed as his own. He quickly stuck one of his works (along with a caption) on the wall next an eighteenth century landscape. The painting was titled Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us, and depicted a peaceful, pastoral scene covered with blue and white police tape. In the caption, Banksy refers to the act of defacement of an original oil painting portraying a countryside scene. Banksy had procured the unsigned painting from a street market and stenciled a blue and white police tape in the foreground (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside for All of Us with caption.

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This piece exemplifies creating new art from old, adding new meaning and value to the work. Instead of rehabilitating an old medium—as a characteristic of remediation described by Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000, p. 56)—Banksy here “reforms” the mediated object itself. Banksy (2005/2007) labels the section containing his museum work “Vandalised oil paintings” (p. 128). Instead of reclaiming street walls, he reclaimed someone else’s work, and then the placement on a museum wall was another level of the same act. The unsanctioned piece of art is also a détourned work, a culture jammed work. (The Danish artist Asger Jorn, a founding member of the Situationist International, had already in 1959 introduced this method of subversion as “détourned paintings” in a show where he exhibited paintings that had been purchased at flea markets and modified by him [Kurczynski, 2014, p.173]. Jorn’s alterations offered a prime example of Situationist spirit and modus operandi.) The artist engages the viewer through their familiarity of classic landscape art then surprises them with the addition of another familiar object (police tape). The combination of the two visual elements working together and against each other to create meaning. The paratext, that of the caption, then adds another layer of meaning, deliberately guiding the viewer to a particular understanding while following the form of the familiar caption style. Thus, the jamming occurs through clear remediation in the painting. It also occurs through its placement or choice of space; the hijacking of museum walls and placement of “outside” unsanctioned art is in itself a jamming act. Museum goers browsing through officially exhibited pieces suddenly encounter an unexpected piece that disrupts the standard museum experience—for however long that piece remains undetected by staff. In Wall and Piece, Banksy (2005/2007) makes an argument for taking street art from outdoors to indoors: “If you want to survive as a graffiti writer when you go indoors, your only option is to carry on painting over things that don’t belong to you there either” (p.128). Considering that his museum stunts were filmed or photographed (see, e.g., Figure 7), Ellsworth-Jones (2012) points to what he views as the actual purpose—publicity. It was not just the museum goers that would see his work but the general public via news outlets.

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It was fun; it was done with style and considerable cool; it hurt nobody; on the whole the museums took it in good heart; and it helped transform Banksy into an international name. The recognition that other artists spend years trying to achieve, he achieved in months. (p. 17)

Figure 7. Banksy at Tate Britain.

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Since 2003, Banksy has infiltrated several museums and placed his artwork: Natural History Museum, London, 2004 The Louvre, 2004 in London, 2005 Four museums in New York in 2005: MoMA, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum and American Museum of Natural History.

Figure 8. Prank at the Louvre, Paris, 2004.

Appropriation and familiarity are essential in engaging the viewer in Banksy’s work and in culture jams. Therefore, culture jammers, and (as it happens) street artists, too, in their disregard for property laws extend this to copyright laws: Re-mixing, copying or even simply imitating other familiar works of art but adding to them or subverting them in some way has the double advantage of both conveying a particular message and engaging the viewers with images they are familiar with. Figure 8, showing one of Banksy’s Louvre prank artworks, is a good example of this appropriation. The is perhaps the most recognized artwork of all time. Thus, remediating this work by adding a in lieu if the iconic face and smile immediately targets the viewer’s previous knowledge and engages them in dialogue, as Werthmann (2015) would say. Banksy thus engages in a culture jamming act on the level of the paintings through appropriating previous works, preforming the “semiotic jujustsu” described by Dery (1993/2010). However, instead of

39 reclaiming the construction and reconstruction of meaning from marketers, he is reclaiming art it from the art world as an institution. Placing the works in museums is merely further indication:

“These galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires. The public never has any real say in what art they see.” (Banksy cited in Ellsworth-Jones, 2012, ch.1, p. 21)

It becomes interpretable as an act of activism, a political statement against the museum as an art institution, but it is also imbued with humor and playfulness. It is as Harold (2004) would call a “prank.” Here, Banksy plays the culture jammer as “prankster.” In addition, his audience was not limited to viewers present at the museums where he carried out these pranks. His documentation (Figure 7) aside, news coverage of his “stunt” then amplified the effect. This will be later discussed.

5.2.3. … Off the Walls Banksy’s work is not limited to walls. Another venue where street artists generally share their work is through exhibitions. Again, Banksy’s method stands out. Banksy’s Los Angeles show “” in September 2006 offered a unique centerpiece: a live 38-year-old elephant named Tai, slathered in “non-toxic” red paint and overlaid with a fleur-de-lis pattern that matches the in the room it was placed in (see Figure 9). Cards distributed to the glittering crowd, that included Angelina Jolie and among other celebrities and media representatives, made the point that “There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a problem that we never talk about. 1.7 billion people have no access to clean water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line” (Ellsworth-Jones, 2012, p. 116). The elephant and the cards, as well as the physical placement of the elephant, make up the piece. The shock factor and political message along with the humor aspect of taking an idom and making it literal (and the half-hearted disguise in mathcing it to the wallpaper) all work in favor of this being a culture jam. Making this statement in a public space where the viewers are certainly way above the poverty line is also relevant. As for the remediatory aspect, the taking of a live animal and turining it into an art medium and the

40 taking of a textual mediation and turning it into a visual one are at play in this culture jam.

Figure 9. Elephant in a Room, 2006

According to Ellswoth-Jones (2012), Banksy made a statement referring back to Tai the Los Angeles elephant: “I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If it’s art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art” (p. 119).

5.2.4. Auctioned Off to Private Walls The case of Girl with Balloon framed canvas (2006) shredded into Love is in the Bin (2018) is another example of the culture jammer as a prankster described by Harold (2004). The work, or more accurately works, reveal several levels of remediation. The artwork started out as a stencil wall in London. Ellsworth-Jones (2012) aptly describes the image as follows: “a little girl has let go of her red heart-shaped balloon which is floating away, its string still trailing—has she just lost her balloon or is she deliberately letting it go?” (p. 77). A typical Banksy stencil, it uses mostly black and white paint with a touch of red. The simplicity of the art clearly resonates with the viewers as,

41 according to the BBC (2017), people in the UK chose it as their favorite artwork roughly fifteen years after its first appearance, favored over popular English paintings like John Constable’s The Hay Wain. Thus, the work used an example here is already a remediation by Banksy onto canvas, a reproduction of the same work in a different medium. A further act of remediation occurred when this piece was sold at a Sotheby’s auction only to be partially shredded on site during one of Banksy’s pranks. The shredding created a new piece that was given the title Love is in the Bin. The act was arguably a culture jamming tactic as a creative prank (thus involving humor and playfulness) that intervenes in the cultural practice of auctioning off artworks; it is subversive in its critique of another aspect of institutionalized practices of the art world and anti-capitalist in its attempt at destroying something with high monetary value being sold as a commodity.

Figure 10. Girl with Balloon framed canvas (left); shredded Love is in the Bin (right).

When Banksy posted a video of the shredding (screen caption shown on the right in Figure 10), the accompanying text stated, “‘The urge to destroy is also a creative urge’ – Picasso” (Banksy, 2018). This indirectly adds an appropriation value to the work as well as marks it as a creative act.

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The pre-shredding piece sold for £1.04 million, and the buyer decided to keep the newly-created shredded version nonetheless (BBC News, 2018). The difference, aside from the “new” art, is the media attention (for which the remediatory aspect is addressed below through other examples). The prank thus did not diminish the value of the artwork, it only added to it through the process of remediation that is employed in the jamming practice. Importantly, this remediated work has also gone through a process of change in physical context. Not only did it reposition from the original stencil on a wall to a stencil on a canvas that has then gone through transformation, but from a publicly displayed work to the transitional auction house space to a private dwelling/space of its new owner— potentially going up on a wall that, depending on its characteristics, will add new meanings to the artwork. The level of immediacy, for one, will increase for the new potential viewers, while it lowers for the rest as they only have digital representations—unless (or until) the work gets exhibited and opened to a slightly wider audience who can experience it the physical sense.

5.2.5. Virtual Walls—Remediation through social media and news media I have never seen a Banksy in “real life,” have you? Banksy built himself a large online following of people most of whom have likely never seen his work in its original physical space. For instance, as of October 2019, Banksy’s Instagram account contains only 111 images but has 6.6 million followers. In contrast, there are 1,660,233 images tagged with the hashtag #banksy (not counting hashtags offering variations of the name).

He was not creating art on the internet, but he was building himself an immensely loyal following on the web, fans who were unlikely to visit a gallery but were more than happy to visit a website. He now shows his new works on his own site, www.banksy.co.uk. He can thus be spraying walls in Israel, Hollywood, Barcelona or London and everyone can see what he has done. (Ellsworth-Jones, 2012, p. 23)

For example, during his residency in New York City, titled “,” Banksy installed art pieces around the city for an entire month and posted photographs of each work on Instagram, giving the location and tagging the first one #banksyny (see Figure 11).

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Figure 11. Banksy’s The Street Is in Play.

People were flocking to see the works before they disappeared, taking their own photographs and sharing them on social media. During October 2013 alone, Instagram contained over 28,000 Instagram photos tagged #banksyny or #banksy geotagged in New York, not even factoring in the images of the NY art pieces that were not properly tagged or added to Instagram much later.

The result of Banksy’s residency in NYC was a continuous, month long series of dispersed real-life and online events that mirrored each other. As such, photos and other social media data taken and shared during that month played an integral role within Banksy’s well- rehearsed and thought-out artistic investigation: examining the relations between a site and its logic of reproducibility in social media platforms. (Hochman et al., 2014, p. 4)

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This implied social experiment may perhaps be a culture jam in its invitation to participate. By announcing the location of his works via a daily Instagram post and by encouraging the use of a specific hashtag for all visitors taking photos of these artworks and posting them on social media platforms, Hochman et al. (2014) argue that Banksy “transformed the visit to the physical location into a banal experience and actively turned all these tagged photos into a representation of this banality” (p. 7). For one thing, people were following others’ online representations of each location, and for another, Banksy himself had taken an image of each work in its particular location—making all other images reproductions of the same “original” image. Banksy’s NYC residency thus turned site-specific works into “hyper- local social media work[s]” (p. 8). Moreover, the use of the hashtag afforded by Instagram add another layer according to MacDowall and de Souza (2018). They believe that the terms used in the tags, “variations on graffiti and practices, have an important indexical function but reveal little about the content of the works themselves or the larger context they are produced in” (p. 12). The #banksyny currently offers over 24,000 posts from various points in time and showing works not directly tied to Banksy’s 2013 NY residency alone but to works in galleries and exhibitions and occasionally works not even made by Banksy. Yet they proliferate the name and the works in this mediated public space of Instagram (and the Internet in general, e.g., as it pops up in Google searches). Thus we have remediations of the art works in their urban sites through photography, which Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) would say lowers its immediacy (as discusses in using the wall as a medium), but I would argue gives them a virtual immediacy. This also increases their hypermediacy as the sharing on social media involves the audiences’ understanding of “opacity—the fact that knowledge of the world comes to us through media” (Bolter and Grusin, 1999/2000, p. 70). The digitization through Instagram photographs also provide convenience and allow for more interaction, something Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000) discuss as part of the reformative aspects of remediation. Moreover, Hochman et al. (2014) believe that if site-specific works is considered to ground the visual experience in time and space, then hyper-local social media data are a manifestation of the opposite: They de-territorialize, converting a location into “an endless set of exchangeable sights [representations] that do not generate a single sense of that 45 place.” A sentiment shared by to Gralińska-Toborek (2017) in her discussion of remediated street art. Through this endless series of representations, we arrive at “a manifestation of different times in that place,” giving us a temporal rather that a spatial experience (based on the time-difference between each representation) (Hochman et al., 2014, p. 8). Nevertheless, viewers may appreciate this added temporal experience and not necessarily share this sense of loss of the spatial one. Especially considering the ephemeral nature of street art. Remediation through Instagram then gives the artworks permanence an accessibility to a mass public, as argued by Werthmann (2015) and others. The image shown in Figure 11 was taken and posted by Banksy in 2013 and has since received over 149,000 “likes,” not to mention the amount of comments and views that all become part of the paratext for this remediated artwork. The original piece itself is discussed in the study as a culture jamming work that involves remediation, and it is now re-discussed in a different context, highlighting the repetition and duplication of the remediatory process. The content that carries the jamming aspect is through this remediation offered an expanded audience than the viewer in the street as it continues to exist in virtual space while the original has long been gone. The original reportedly lasted one day (Wyatt, 2013). Now the image lives in cyber space, described as “nonplace” by Bolter and Grusin (1999/2000, p. 179). They argue that this space is itself a remediation as part of the digital network, virtual reality, and social space—all of which remediate other spaces (p. 183). This means we have culture jamming artefact that involves remediations but now is also part of a remediated space. In addition, because of the shock factor or the humor factor that are part of culture jams performed by Banksy, they attract news coverage. News articles then help disseminate the work and the persona behind it. It is not just a matter of mediation and remediation but rather a double remediation: The remediated work is further remediated through the new digital interface, as a photograph of the art work that exists in physical space and as a textual description of the art (in the news article) or textual tagging (on social media platforms). The previously discussed museum pranks, for instance, have been reported by various news media outlets including (Morris, 2003), where the latter offers a more textual remediation of the culture jam, and NPR (Norris, 2005), which offers both textual and visual representations of the prank in Metropolitan Museum of Art 46 and one of the artworks involved in it. In addition, remediations in video form exist for many of the works (the pranks for instance, including the shredding of Girl with Balloon) on news outlets, social media platforms, and YouTube. These are only a few examples where remediation in digital form expands the culture jamming practice.

6. Discussion and Conclusion

Whether you love or hate Banksy, whether he is a creative genius or a hack with talent in self-publicity, whether he is an activist taking on capitalism or capitalizing on his fame— there is no doubt that Banksy’s work not only challenged what is acceptable as art but has indeed made a difference in the art world. “In terms of impact and raising public awareness, Banksy’s career is unmatched,” stated Cedar Lewisohn already in 2008. Over ten years later, and he is still going strong (BBC 2019). The reception and recognition of street art nowadays are also different due to what is known as “the Banksy effect” (Beccakao, 2016). This paper attempts to take a critical look at the different practices Banksy has engaged in over the years under the assumption that these practices are what gained him his initial popularity, allowed him to infiltrate the art world, and then continued to raise his status and global recognition. By looking at Banksy’s work, this paper aimed to show how it matches the defining characteristics of culture jamming—highlighting the diversity of the concept and its practices. It also aimed to investigate the influence of remediation within culture jamming practices and the resulting artworks. Culture jamming follows the idea of using media as a medium, often utilizing dominant modes of power rather than opposing them through rejection. Culture jams in the form of street art works on similar grounds, from reclaiming public space as a medium to reappropriating and remixing established cultural artefacts and images. While street art remediates previous art modes, it is itself remediated. It is not just the work or art in its basic (physical) form—an image on a wall or a construction in physical space—but the whole process of mediation and remediation of the work: its creation (e.g., creating the stencil then sparing on a wall), its documentation (through photography), its dissemination (through news and social media), its removal (or displacement) for sale at auctions, etc. All of these remediatory aspects concerning one artwork add to its visual mediatory value, and

47 if this work is a culture jam, then arguably, the impact of this culture jam is increased by extension. Another aspect of mediation occurs to me in relation to Banksy, an addition to the spaces of mediation addressed in the analysis: Behind the wall. Banksy’s concealed identity can be seen as a refusal or denial of mediation; there is no face to be photographed and included in articles and biographies, no name aside from the . While this is a form of protection from a legal perspective—as he is open to potential litigation for a large number of acts of “vandalism” (the inflatable Guantanamo prisoner her placed in in 2006, being one)—the anonymity also allows for the freedom to perform more daring works and provide social and political criticism without censorship. It liberates him as a culture jammer. Moreover, the feedback (and the analysis) becomes more about the work than the person. With regards to Banksy as a culture jammer vs. Banksy as a brand and culprit in mainstream capitalist culture, I previously mentioned but would like to elaborate on the idea that Banksy’s work operates on more than one level. The content of the art contains social and political messages and implications, but the technique or practice employed in a work also has the potential to subvert. To answer the seeming contraction requires one to turn to the question instead; that is, perhaps we should ask what is (or was) Banksy trying to jam or subvert and whether his gain in cultural and monetary capital is in fact a sign that he has accomplished what he set out to do. Banksy’s intentions aside, we could turn that question onto the works as objects of analysis to see what they say, how and what they subvert or jam. After all, the artist does not have to be politically motivated for their work to be a political act (both Lewisohn, 2008, p. 104, and Schacter, 2008, p. 50, address this point). Culture jamming is part of a historical continuum that parallels the existence of mass media. It encompasses a multitude of practices, giving it an adaptability and endurance that lends itself to countercultural purposes. You do not need to identify with a particular subculture—or a “lifestyle” as is the trend nowadays—that is merely one of hundreds of different yet the same culture/lifestyle that make up the totality of the mainstream; all you need is the right approach, the right tool, to create dialogue and provoke change. The remediatory elements involved in culture jamming practices allow for 48 them to fulfill their function but also amplify their capacity to convey a message, reach an audience, jam a particular part of mainstream culture. Sometimes all it takes is a sense of humor, a dash of fearlessness, and the belief that the world is your medium, too—not just that of the state and corporations.

7. Limitations

Initially, this paper aimed to show how culture jamming can be an effective countercultural tool by analyzing how it is used by street artist Banksy. Banksy’s “success” as opposed to the less visible impact of other jammers like Adbusters was meant to serve as proof that a comprehensive approach to culture jamming has more value than a reductive one. However, notions of “success” and “effectiveness” are problematic and difficult to measure. Moreover, while Banksy has made an impact on the art world and is, arguably, responsible for bringing street art into the mainstream, his use of culture jamming practices would then only prove the inevitable: that countercultural movements and methods would yet again be subsumed into the mainstream. Consequently, a different approach needed to be taken. Time constrains were then also a limitation. Further, “the subjectivity of the researcher—the self as a research instrument—is seen as central to the quality of research” according to Somekh and Lewin (2004, p. 348). It should therefore be accounted for as a potential limitation in this work. The paper also does not follow a straightforward simple methodology but rather attempts to grapple with a broad concept and offer a clear yet comprehensive definition (and ties it to a media concept) that then is used as the basis for analysis. This creates an overcomplicated path that is rather impractical.

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8. Ethical Considerations and Disclaimer

The subject of this study, culture jamming, may involve illegal acts that infringe on copyright laws as well as property laws. It may also include content that is anti- establishment and offensive to some. Further, the objects of study in this paper fall under the category of unsanctioned street art; as such, they are considered by some as acts of vandalism. The content of these objects (as they are simultaneously street art and, as this paper argues, culture jams) may also infringe on copyright laws. These issues are controversial and subject to debate. Consequently, the following disclaimer is necessary:

The content of this paper is meant to neither encourage nor discourage illegal activities such as graffiti and unsanctioned street art in general or any culture jamming practices that contain possibly-offensive material or that are damaging to public and private property, material or intellectual.

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