Response to blog prompt # 8

The following blog is hosted on the Adbusters website.

https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/new_aesthetic

I first found the Adbusters magazine at the Food Conspiracy Co-op on 4th Ave my senior year of high school-- it was my first refreshing taste of counter culture.

According to their website, Adbusters is a journal of the mental environment, "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." The "A New Aesthetic" blog is "Adbuster's Culturejammer Headquarters." The blogs written on the page are currently about culture jamming, Shepard Fairey's unethical behavior, the sub-par design quality of last year's Super Bowl half-time ads, and how bankers in London were advised to "dress down" in anticipation of the G20 protests last April. From what I've read, culture jamming is basically when people decide to "jam" the intended message of a capitalist advertisement/expression.

The literal explanation of this would be when graffiti artists change the meaning of a billboard to go from advertising a product a corporation wants people to buy to a message that draws attention to say, the sweatshop labor used to produce such an item. In terms of the G20, protesters were able to culture jam the bankers' expressions of their wealth (their clothes and accessories) during the time of the G20 meetings-- the bankers were afraid that they might be targets of violence if they appeared in their normal attire. The fact that the bankers wore "regular people" clothes during the time of the summit is significant because it forced them to literally put themselves in the shoes of the working class people they are financially screwing and to think about why people would be protesting the G20 in the first place.

This blog highlights the critical response of artists, designers, activists and others to advertising and other modes of expression that represent the corruption of the global free trade economy. Those who contribute to the blog are aware of how language and art affect culture and are interested in creating alternatives to an industry they see as dehumanizing because we are all part of re-designing our reality for the better.

Adbusters is edited by Kalle Lasn, who's most recent book is called "Design Anarchy:" "Equal parts memoir, manifesto, scrapbook, and revolutionary design manual, Design Anarchy is an urgent call for artists, designers, architects and communicators to re-engage with the world."

*

Then I found bldgblog.blogspot.com through some convoluted search of anarchist art and situationsim. In a nutshell the blog is about "Architectural conjecture, urban speculation, and landscape futures." I think it's interesting to think about design in terms of the spaces we inhabit-- like how much human effort goes into design our natural as well as manufactured environments, and how our imaginations are stifled or stimulated by our physical space (& how that in terms affects our well-being). The site is authored by Geoff Manaugh out of Los Angeles and has been praised by the Wall Street Journal. As you should have guessed by now, I like the social commentary and the subversive tone of the blog in terms of how Manaugh feels that people need to take charge of (once again) designing our spaces/lives/realities.