Visual Pollution and Social Asymmetry. The Origin of Dientenegro

Abstract

Expressions such as “cultural sabotage” or “cultural interference” identify a movement called Culture Jamming that aims to react creatively to the manipulation that advertising communication has been carrying out on consumers’ consciences for decades. The interesting challenge of the movement is to use the same tools used by mass communication, but in a subversive way, in order to stimulate the reaction of individuals and provoke a real “consumer revolution”, i.e. an awareness and a capacity for critical action in relation to the dynamics of consumption in contemporary society. The paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of Culture Jamming by framing it in the context of the dissident cultures of the 20th century and through the stories, actions and logics of some ‘cultural sabotage workshops’, such as the magazine Adbusters, or the experience of the Billboard Banditry, in whose work it is possible to re-think the 20th century “as the century of the work mentalisation and as the century of an uninterrupted battle on the question of the collective mind” (Berardi 2003, p.24). In particular, the paper aims to narrate the actions of cultural sabotage produced by the Dientenegro collective, in the political and social context of Buenos Aires in the early 2000s.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.20365/disegnarecon.24.2020.3