20 Mar 2016

Culture jamming, celebrity, and artistic expression

From Standing Room Only, 2:25 pm on 20 March 2016
Professor Ian Bogost

Professor Ian Bogost Photo: Supplied

Culture jamming is the practice of subverting an established icon or brand for artistic, political, or comedic reasons. But what happens when it gets co-opted by the very people and institutions that are being made fun of? 

Recently Coca Cola launched an online campaign allowing people to make GIFs to advertise this massive corporation's product.  But they've banned over three thousand words from being used in the user-made ads. How has the culture jamming community reacted to these limits?

Ian Bogost from the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has written about this campaign for The Atlantic magazine, spoke to Standing Room Only's Shaun D Wilson about culture jamming; which extends to the celebrity mashup art of Brandon Bird.