Journal of the Mental Environment

No 27
autumn 1999 $5.75

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ap
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US/CAN $5.75 UK £3.95 ¥1200

 Isn’t this
what design is all about...?
 making
filthy oil companies look “clean”...
 making
spaghetti sauce look like it’s been cooked by grandma...
 making
junky condos look hip.

Text paraphrased from a Tibor Kalman quote, Print magazine, 1997

graphic
design is...
...the most ubiquitous of all the arts.
It responds to needs at once personal and public,
embraces concerns both economic and ergonomic, and
is informed by many disciplines including art and archi-
tecture, philosophy and ethics, literature and language,
science and politics and performance. Graphic design is
everywhere, touching everything we do, everything we
see, everything we buy: we see it on billboards and in
Bibles, on taxi receipts and on web sites, on birth certifi-
cates and on gift certificates, on the folded instructions
inside jars of aspirin and on the thick pages of
children’s’ picture books. Graphic design is the boldly
directional arrows on street signs and the blurred,
frenetic typography on the title sequence to E.R. It is
the bright green logo for the New York Jets and the
monochromatic front page of The Wall Street Journal.
It is hang-tags in clothing stores, postage stamps and
food packaging, fascist propaganda posters and brainless
junk mail. Graphic design is complex combinations of
words and pictures, numbers and charts, photographs
and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demand the
clear thinking of a particularly thoughtful individual
who can orchestrate these elements so that they all add
up to something distinctive, or useful, or playful, or
surprising, or subversive, or somehow memorable.
Graphic design is a popular art and a practical art, an
applied art and an ancient art. Simply put, it is the art
of visualizing ideas. — Jessica Helfand

Jessica Helfand is a graphic designer and the author of

Six +2 Essays on Design and New Media and Paul Rand:
American Modernist, distributed by Emigre.
designanarchy by Kalle Lasn
Designers are to our information age what
engineers were to the age of steam, what scientists
were to the age of reason. They set the mood of
the mental environment — the look and lure of
magazines, the tone and pull of TV, the give-and-
take of the Net. They create the envy and desire
that fuels the economy and the cynicism that
underlies our postmodern condition.
But the most exciting thing about design today
is not the digital pyrotechnics, the exploding,
mutating forms — the wild anarchy of it all. It’s the
politics. More than any other profession, design
stands in the crossfire of competing worldviews:
modern vs. postmodern, commercial vs. uncom-
mercial, Planet Earth vs. Planet Inc. Whether
designers acknowledge it or not, their profession is
one of the key sites of struggle over the production
and distribution of meaning.
1Countering the Tradition of the Apolitical Designer, by Katherine McCoy, first published in
Design Renaissance: Selected Papers from the International Design Congress , Glasgow, Scotland, 1993.
Many designers refuse to believe it. They
went to design schools that taught them to be
“professionals” whose job was simply to serve “the
communications needs” of their clients. They were
trained to distance themselves from the ethical
and political values that underlie their work. Gener-
ations of designers learned to put their personal
feelings aside and just deliver “design solutions.”
Critic Katherine McCoy likens this attitude to
that of prostitutes, practitioners of the so-called
oldest profession, who “must maintain an extreme
of cool objectivity about the most intimate of
human activities, disciplining their personal
responses to deliver an impartial
1 and consistent
product to their clients.”
Pity the high-powered, market-driven, modern
designers. They’re well paid for their commercial
sex, but passion eludes them. >>
★
r
ne
win
Brand Design Competition
Health/Beauty Brand Packaging
Brand Design Association,
an Affiliate of the American Institute of Graphic Arts

01
Gillette MACH3 Razor
Client: The Gillette Company
Design Firm: Wallace
Church Associates

“The Gillette MACH3 shaving

system redefined the entire
shaving category with its exclu-
sive three comfort blades. This
razor packaging works syner-
gistically with the actual razor
itself, providing a staging area
to communicate and reinforce
the product’s breakthrough
performance.”
 LETTERS
In your “We’re Not Feminists” piece [Adbusters
No.26] are you asking me to trash my beliefs and
experiences as a feminist, a woman, a young person, to
replace it with another type of “ism” we just haven’t
gotten around to naming yet? Please try to understand
the importance of a truly pluralistic activism instead of
some massive, essentialized glob of frustration whose
motto is to “wreck the world.”

Susan hopkins, Rochester, New York

The New Activism
Kalle Lasn’s effort to make culture jam-
ming into a general philosophy and
program of activism in “The New Activ-
ism” [Adbusters, No. 26] is intellectually
and programmatically pitiful.
In “We’re Not Lefties,” Lasn sneers at
the left with facile jibes and generaliza-
tions: “tired, self-satisfied and dogmatic,
simplistic, lack passion, feel like losers.”
The left has the feel of losers because
the forces of corporate capital have been
on a roll and have been beyond the con-
trol of any left actions. Many on the left
have been thinking very hard about how
this reality can be challenged and
changed, and they believe that both ratio-
nal thought and counter-organization
must play a role. Lasn is hostile to such
views — action first, based on outrage, is
apparently enough. No need to assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the enemy,
to organize forces of resistance, and to try
to understand when various possible
forms of resistance are useful, worthless,
or counterproductive. No, that’s for ram-
bling academics, who are not interested
in actually doing anything.
“Communications professors tell their
students everything that’s wrong with the
global media monopoly, but never a word
about how to fix it.” This is baloney. Ben
Bagdikian and Mark Crispin Miller don’t
propose solutions? In a book on The
Global Media, Bob McChesney and I
devote an entire chapter to what can be
done about it.
What the establishment fears is not
culture jamming, but rather an organized
opposition that mobilizes large numbers
for actions that challenge corporate con-
trol of economic and political
decision-making. Culture jamming has
its role to play, but the notion that it
alone, or predominantly, can do the job
and that rational thought and organiza-
tion are passé, is dangerous as well as
being profoundly mistaken.
Edward S. Herman
[co-author, manufacturing consent]
Penn Valley, Pennsylvania
Once again, a traditional lefty describes as
“action” such efforts as “thinking very hard”
and writing proposals that others, presum-
ably, are expected to carry forward. But
what have you done lately besides talk and
write, Mr. Herman? Would the left be in so
sorry a state if it had permitted itself more
action — even if “based on outrage”?
— Kalle Lasn, editor@adbusters.org
Have you ever heard of bell hooks, Audre
Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Rebecca Walker,
or Nicole Brossard, to mention some of
the more obvious women reflecting the
diversity of opinion and richness that you
characterize as “a strangely irrelevant
‘ism’” in your “We’re Not Feminists”
piece? Have you not read any of the excit-
ing scholarship coming out of the newly
legitimized women’s studies academic
programs? Have you failed to notice the
ongoing growth of Riot Grrrl offshoots,
the girl ‘zine trend, the establishment of
kick-ass social movement groups like
Bloodsisters? Finally, have you forgotten
that lots of “culture jamming” practices
(the use of “sexploitation” stickers on ads,
the creative alteration of billboards) were
started by feminists? Spare me the back
stabbing. If you can’t produce intelligent
print, then maybe stick to your clever and
pretty pictures. Remember that we create
social change by standing on the shoul-
ders of giants, not by putting them down.
Lauraine Leblanc
Montreal, Quebec
I urge you to take another look and see
that feminists are among your best allies
against consumerism. Feminist thinkers
continually produce widely read critiques
of the ways that sexism and consumerism
feed off of each other — two examples are
Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and
Susan Douglas’ Where the Girls Are, both
of which examine the beauty industry’s
highly profitable manipulation of wom-
en’s feelings of self-worth.
Anti-consumerist critique has been a cor-
nerstone of feminist thought.

12 ADBUSTERS NO.27

Lyn Elliot
Iowa City, Iowa
I hope you have enough time for self-
reflection to possibly consider that your
attempt to tell us what you are not is just
another form of the tired ‘90s thing
invented by the mass media (see the
Sprite commercials on being “real”) so
people can feel Unique™.
Culture jamming in all its forms
(fighting all the -isms, fighting the
destruction of the planet, fighting ennui
and apathy, fighting the multinational
military-industrial-consuming complex)
comes down to one thing for me: resist
every effort to label, codify, or package
anything (people, ideas, movements) for
mass consumption. Because in so doing,
you must eventually explain what your
package is not.
amy lewis
denver, colorado
Your piece “We’re Not Feminists” is out-
right offensive. The emergence of
women-only spaces marked the decline
of feminism? What!? Reverse discrimina-
tion? What a load of crap. I’ll risk
assuming the author is a light-skinned
human sans uterus. The patronizing tone
of the piece is evidence that someone
needs to (re)read Valerie Solanas’ SCUM
Manifesto. Feminism softening up male
fiefdoms? Holism? The natural world?
Has the author read any Avital Ronell,
Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, Andrea
Dworkin, bell hooks?
David Waggoner
Louisville, Kentucky
Your last issue was great. I especially
liked “We’re Not Lefties” — it’s true, I’m
26 years old myself and I feel like I’ve
never met a “real” lefty.
Except for one. His name is Richard
Stallman, and he is the founder of the
Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org).
Stallman invented perhaps the most
brilliant legal document since the US Bill
of Rights: the “GNU Public License,” a
usage license for free software. This
license uses copyright law against the
entire concept of intellectual proper-
ty. It says you may use the software
for free, for any purpose, and you
may also modify it, but if you modify
it, your modifications must also be
released under the GPL. In effect, it
creates a “snowball effect,” where
GPL software begets more GPL soft-
ware, begets more GPL software. By
design, it keeps software free and
protects it against those who might
deign to modify it and sell it for exor-
bitant fees or without source.
Brian Behlendorf
brian@hyperreal.org
Escape From Tia
Due to your diligent reporting [“End-
games,” Adbusters, No. 26], I knew what
was happening when I got an unsolicited
message from tia@cKone.com, some-
thing about going dancing with her and
Robert. Like you suggested, I wrote back
saying, “Get lost,” and she gave me an
update on Robert’s movie career.
I want to get rid of her. I looked to Cal-
vin Klein’s website for a solution.
Couldn’t find one. Can you help me
Escape?
Aiden Schlichting Enns
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Brands in Text Books
The article says, “It’s superior to earlier
textbooks because kids recognize and
identify with the brand-name touch-
stones [“Endgames,” Adbusters, No. 26].”
The irony’s not lost on me.
As a high school student who’s had to
put up with the mediocrity of California’s
integrated math program (a fluffy hybrid-
ization of traditional algebra, trig/stat
and geometry courses), in which the
“enriching” (and mathematically useless)
sidebars constantly got in the way of the
math, I can report that math is best
learned when it’s best taught. Too many
attempts to yank at a student’s attention
span with splashy allusions to “relevant”
culture is like the magazine that is 75%
advertisement, 1% substance, all printed
on cheap stock — it gets old. Fast.
Considering how quickly “relevant”
★
Adbusters:
Magazine of the Year 1999
Canadian National Magazine Awards
culture changes these days, what’s the
point of trying to keep that kind of text-
book on the cutting edge? It will always
be, from the moment it leaves the press-
es, one lame step behind. Cut out the
bullshit, ye creppy grown-ups! Gimme
my damn math!
Jen Cho
enameless@aol.com
What Philosophy’s For
I am 19 and an undergraduate philoso-
phy student, and after all I’ve experienced
swimming against the tide, I must tell
you how much I resonate with Mark Kin-
gwell’s article “What’s Philosophy For”
[Adbusters, No.26]. It was one more small
word of affirmation of what has been a
lifelong drive for me — philosophizing.
Whoever said of you, “Mr. Kingwell,
like so many intellectuals, was projecting
his own sense of self-doubt and frustra-
tion,” made, I believe, an error of only two
words. A true statement about the Socrat-
ic wisdom Kingwell appears to practice as
well as preach would be thus: “Mr. Kin-
gwell, unlike so many intellectuals, was
admitting his own sense of self-doubt and
frustration.” That is, Kingwell recognizes
the deficit of true doubt and the transla-
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NO.27 autumn/99 13
tion of personal frustration into blame
(and subsequent neglect of responsibili-
ty) that characterizes the psychology of
this sick consumer culture.
Nicole Daniels
rochester, new york
Dérive
I was quite impressed by the article “Déri-
ve: Adrift in the Magic City” [Adbusters,
No.26]. It avoided the didactic and vague-
ly self-deluding tone of some of Adbusters’
other pieces on the Situationist Internatio-
nale, painting détournement as some sort
of kitschy and automatic reversal of the
stale banality of spectacular culture — an
inverse reaction to soothe some lefty
pseudo-rebel’s fears of apathy — and the
situationists themselves as vaguely
romantic bicyclists, a postmodern bed-
time story for the art-school activist
(“Once upon a time there was a festival in
Paris . . . .” Yawn.). But hey, “Dérive” actu-
ally managed to capture the essence of
the SI without drowning it in the sort of
newsstand niceties and sticker-conve-
nient sloganeering that seemed to be the
soup du jour. Or, more accurately, hour.
Thus, I pose a question: Why not a
theme issue of Adbusters based around
Chetcheglov’s “Formulary,” where, to
coin your preferred ideological brand
name, “culture jammers” help design the
sectors of a new urban environment, per-
haps using the famous surrealist method
of the exquisite corpse? Groups of people
in different cities, knowing only frag-
ments of their comrades’ work, designing
the new noise of a city that’s been allowed
to happen. It would require networking,
planning and effort but, if completed,
could be a testimony to the culture jam-
mer movement’s ability to create works
beyond mere crude parody, both artisti-
cally and politically.
patrick fifield
pfifield@roadrunner.nf.net
Redefining Jamming
When I see the term “culture jamming,” I
can’t help but think that’s a definition
more befitting of the “corporate world”
than one describing the actions of a
group looking to waken the world from
its consumerist slumber. Perhaps a term
focused around “culture enlightenment”
would be more in line with what you are
trying to accomplish. After all, that offers
a perception of something more intelli-
gent, intellectual, profound, aspiring
— the very essence of what you purport to
be, and what we should strive to be as
people. Violence, destruction, intrusion are
definitions that hover around the phrase
“jamming.” It’s quite military in nature,
and I for one do not want to be a soldier in
anyone’s army, but rather, a member of
the human race who (with all the frailties,
faults, smarts, wonderment and beauty
that come with it) can hopefully help a
few people around me, including myself,
become a better one. That is what I hope
lies at the core of your position. Because
that is, basically, what I would like to get
out of your magazine.
Jim Johnson
Madison, Wisconsin
TV Turn-Off
A phone call came last month that we had
been “selected to receive” a Nielsen TV
Ratings Viewing Diary. We own a TV and
use it only to watch the occasional movie,
so the prospect of being one of the fami-
lies that determines ratings for shows
delighted my culture jammer sensibili-
ties. Our children also do not watch TV.
They read books, paint, create art and the-
ater, tell stories, play outside, take walks
— all those things kids do when they’re
not drugged out in front of regularly
scheduled programming.
I’ve carefully filled out my Nielsen
Viewing Diary with a flat line down the
side of each page indicating that the TV is
off, all day, every day. At the bottom of

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Fill out the subscription insert card, visit our
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“What was that bump?”

14 ADBUSTERS NO.27
each page, I simply said that we chose not
to watch TV.
Today I’m mailing our TV Diary back
to Nielsen and in it is a copy of the article
“Headrush” [Adbusters, No.25], along
with a brief commentary about the addic-
tive qualities of TV. I hope whomever
gets it reads it, and maybe a crack will
appear in their programmed shell.
Rebecca Sandel
Seattle, Washington
out and look for sponsors for their
yearbooks, in which usually — for a
small price — you can purchase an
entire page to advertise on. This
dawned on me as a good place for you
to advertise to further expand your
market and give out some healthy pro-
paganda to the people who are going
to be taking over the world.
kelly fritsch
visa man
Chilliwack, British columbia

photo: christopher schmidt and sally fischer

Rules of Influence
Adbusters is attempting a laudable proj-
ect, but largely preaches to the converted.
If one of your goals is to mitigate con-
sumer culture, why not look to the
cheapest and most direct means to reach
that culture?
Infomercials are cheap to produce and
display (at 2 a.m.) and they are presented
in the laziest of mediums to the laziest of
thinkers. Most of the “rules of influence”
from psychology (or Aristotle’s rhetoric)
are nicely adhered to, and lazy thought
leads smoothly to faulty conclusions.
It seems to me that a spoof of these tac-
tics could be very successful: an
entertaining spoof that could illustrate
the faulty logics employed to entice sales.
For instance, one spoof infomercial could
have beautiful people as salespeople and
say things like, “Gee, you sure are pretty.
I like you so much I’d buy just about any-
thing!”
It is low-brow, crass, cheap and direct-
ed. And it just might let enough people in
on the joke to have some effect.
geoffrey butt
gbutt@direct.ca
I was sitting in the cafeteria at lunch last
week, talking to my friends about Buy
Nothing Day, and I started to think how it
would be possible to reach everyone in
my school and educate them — or at least
make them aware of what’s wrong with
our capitalistic society, what’s wrong with
TV and what’s wrong with buying stuff
from multi-million-dollar corporations. I
could put posters up around school and
hand out pamphlets at lunch hour, etc.
But I realized that, every year, schools go
Die or be Filled
I am a lonely, empty, disconnected
self, floating in a huge ocean. Only
occasionally does some large shape
loom out of the depths, only to drift
slowly by and away, like freedom for
Rilke’s panther or meaning for the
Columbine shooters. Bloated in ether,
we pass a life with no connections, no
net, no family, except the constant,
futile commodification of consumerism
to fill the empty void.
The small Japanese hamlet surround-
ed its work and life and leisure with
family and structure and relationships.
Work as we know it was not work, more
like going to someone else’s home and on
the way passing through streets where
every face was known and a part. Do not
ask why that cannot be. The dead cannot
resurrect the living.
For now the lonely “artist” sits apart,
connected only electronically but not at
any heart, and instead a substitute televi-
sion and occasional touch or visit, with a
constant commute to work through cattle
yards of commuters hating each other for
the lemmings we are and the loneliness
we contain like boxes on an assembly
line waiting to die or be filled.
ranald bruce
sonoma county, california
Early Age Debt
This photo was taken in May 1999 at the
Baltimore Waterfront (read Corporate)
Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. Building
brand loyalty and credit debt cannot
begin soon enough, I suppose. The most
depressing part of this scene was that we
watched hundreds of parents encourag-
ing their children without a thought to
this gross display by Chevy Chase Bank.
Christopher Schmidt
Sally Fischer
Baltimore, Maryland
The Nature of Radicals
I submit the following mind bomb: Free
Radicals. Those charged molecules wan-
dering the body, wreaking havoc on
systems and searching for oxygen — just
to breathe. The specialists and cyberneti-
cians recommend neutralization, but
we, still groggy from the anaesthetics,
the reruns, yesterday’s scores, and the
nightcaps, hear only the words “free rad-
icals.” And that is what we do, starting
with ourselves. We have survived with
loneliness and boredom long enough.
There is no life in mere survival!
We must use every tool at our dispos-
al to advance liberation, construct
situations saturated with the Real, and
live poetic lives. What do we have in our
tool shed? The dusty marriage license
for praxis and theory. The skeleton key
to desire. A blueprint for philosophy in
the service of aesthetics. The erotic
longing for a fuller life. A printing
press. A radio transmitter. Spray paint.
Crowbars. Street theater costumes.

NO.27 autumn/99 15
 Disappearing ink and whoopee in all its sordid detail — is a nullity.
Editor Kalle Lasn cushions for all. To me, anybody who is an explorer
Art Director Chris Dixon
Full Eros Ahead! of consciousness is an artist. As many
Managing Editor Hilary Keever
Communications Allan MacDonald artists as possible now need to stand up
Benjamin Peters
Office Manager Jane Burgess Ryuo, Japan and say that the current system has
Researcher Paul Shoebridge exhausted all potential for conscious
Campaign Coordinator Tom Liacas
expansion and is now destroying, eco-
Subscriptions Jason Corless
Website Designer Jeff Harris
We are Null logically and socially, the conditions for
Webserver Administrator Patrick Gibson Here’s a powerful concept for culture consciousness to grow.
Shipping Cristina Teixeira jammers that I think must be It is the task of artists to mainstream
Intern Anita Lee White employed: Nullity. the very notion of conscious explora-
Creative Consultants Bruce Grierson, Charles Dobson Postmodern theorist David Lasch tion. This can’t stay on the fringe
Associate Editors James MacKinnon, Allan Casey, argued that as the dominant, affluent anymore — that is part of the problem.
Jim Boothroyd, John Mraz, Ryan Bigge, Cat Simril cultural psychology of the north How about an Adbusters-organized
European Correspondents Randy Ghent, Simon Birch
becomes increasingly narcissistic, international delegation of artists take
Computer Consultants Cliff Veley, Jeremy Hoey the civilization becomes a nullity. The this message to the UN? A universal
Marketing Consultant Harvey McKinnon word alone certainly causes one to stop message: “We have reached Nullity.’
Printing Transcontinental Printing Inc.
and think.
Color Supreme Graphics Adrian Tyler
Accounting Ken Lackner, Elmer Daum Faced with the word “nullity,” I auckland, new zealand
Publishers Kalle Lasn, Bill Schmalz begin to consider what the essence of
Volunteers Greg Bonser, Rob Brydon, Nadia Carvalho,
civilization is. We (the big we) are very
Corey, Graeme Duffy, Wade Germain, Vicki Hodson, impressed by ourselves as technolo- Popping the Big Question
Robert Kim, Lynn Kruszewski, Henrique Do Livramento, gists. We have become obsessed with I managed to ask [Canadian Prime
Carrie McKellar, Jesse McLaren, Amy O’Brian, Alvina our own cleverness. Minster] Jean Chrétien a ‘Big Ques-
Quek, Robb Ross, Keely Stott, Lisa Wulwik, Jaime Yard
The ancient Greeks considered civi- tion’ at the Rio plus five meeting in
Research Assistance Wade Germain lization to be an optimum condition for 1997 at the UN. After he gave a speech
Proofreaders Jane Burgess, Dave Campbell, Jason the expansion of consciousness. Is civi- committing to attacking climate
Corless, Wade Germain, Paul Shoebridge, Risto Tavela
lization that condition in which change, I asked: “How can you say
consciousness can expand, grow, you’re serious about climate change
Roadworks stencil font (Graphic Agitation Sections)
courtesy Club Twenty-One, London
change, challenge, excite, inspire, when you are subsidizing the fossil
instill joy? I think it is. fuel industry to the tune of billions of
Aim Higher Ad Photo by Randall Cosco If this is so then we desperately need dollars?” He hummed and hawed, and
to ask: Where are we? Are we in fact a then answered, “We subsidize the fos-
Thank you to:
nullity? Not totally. The spark is there sil fuel industry to buy time.”
The Foundation for Deep Ecology
Masako Lasn, Hanae Tominaga, Weekes Photo, and needs to be nurtured. But the bulk Anyway, I popped my Big Question.
Eric Cottrell. Aaron Rolick, Sig at the of our endeavors — consumer culture There were dozens of media there, and
Vancouver Public Library, Darlene Palumbo,

Manuscripts and Artwork Contributors – No.27

Please send us your ideas, articles, illustrations, photographs and
spoof-ad concepts. For submission guidelines, see www.adbusters.org
under the Magazine Info section or contact editor@adbusters.org or Cover art by James Victore
artdirector@adbusters.org. Submissions will not be returned — please Creating posters is an opportunity to present alternative views to the often vacuous
do not send originals or self-addressed envelopes. and superficial messages we are buffeted by daily. My deliberate effort is directed at
gr
ap
creating visually striking, sometimes satirical, but always poignant images that will
Adbusters magazine is published by Adbusters Media Foundation.
19

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invite close examination and lodge in viewers' consciousness.

2 0 ag
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GST# R127330082, ISBN/ISSN 0847-9097. Canadian Publications Mail – James Victore, New York, NY
Product Sales Agreement No. 0465534. USA Newsstand Distribution by
Eastern News Distributors Inc.,1 Media Way, 12406 Route 250, Milan, G-7 Summit protests
OH 44846. © Copyright 1999 by Adbusters Media Foundation. All Rights photographed by London-
Reserved. based Nick Cobbing
Line drawings for opening
spreads by Vancouver animator
1243 West 7th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6H 1B7 Canada • Aaron Rolick
Tel. (604) 736-9401 • Fax (604) 737-6021 •
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Full-page product photos by Paint strokes artwork by

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Mark Gilbert

16 ADBUSTERS NO.27

picture on billboard: Ap photo - alexander zemlianichenko
Billboard in Downtown Vancouver – June, 1999
it got a bit of coverage, but not much. So
not only do you have to pop the Big Ques-
tion, you need to figure out a way to get a
buzz happening around it. That’ll take
some brainstorming!
Tooker gomberg
greenspiration@web.net
It’s Just a Game
I am 14 years old and male — basically
the prime target that companies like iD
software (makers of the Doom video
game) are going after. I would like to
point out Bruce Grierson’s ignorance
cognitive dissonance détournements
www.adbusters.org
subvertising cyberjams meme warfare
about first person shooter games
[Adbusters, No.26].
In Doom, when you "kill" something,
you click a mouse button, or press a key
on a keyboard. The targets you are trying
to kill are not running away or screaming.
You do not see terror in their eyes. They
are not begging for mercy. They are try-
ing to kill you. And they happen to be
monsters. You are saving the human race
from alien domination! (That's the story
of the game.) You do not "blow limbs off,"
as Grierson put it; you fire upon the mon-
ster and you see a precorded animation.
The monster just kind of does a backflip
and falls to the ground. You do not see a
pool of blood slowly turn the ground
around it a dark shade of
crimson; it's just the same ugly gray
ground. It's very unrealistic.
It is kind of sad that people fail to real-
ize that tens of thousands of people play
these games all the time, and they don't
go nuts. Now, if you are messed up in the
head, and you play these games, it might
drive you nuts. If violent stimuli makes
you want to kill people, then I strongly
encourage you to go to a mental hospital.
Doom is just a game.
I've been playing first-person-shooters
heavily for at least five years, and I don't
want to kill anyone. I don't know how to
load a gun. I don't have a gun, but I guess
people should be protecting me from
myself? Oh dear God I’m playing Doom
everybody run I’m going to go nuts at
any moment!
warren henning san
diego, CAlifornia wkhenning@hot-
mail.com
Send your letters to:
editor@adbusters.org
fax: (604) 737-6021
1243 West 7th Avenue
Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6H 1B7
always on
NO.27 autumn/99 17
graphic

agitation
1920-2000
Text by Bruce Grierson

As a tool of protest, design is the great stealth agent.

It carries powerful messages of dissent across cultures and ages,
past the filter of the rational mind, and into the public heart.
 Do design and politics mix? These days,
a lot of graphic artists would say no...
It’s not a designer’s job to be the hammer that shapes the world, they would argue.
The moment you’re designing with a political agenda in mind, you’re flacking. And
if that political agenda is at odds with the client’s agenda, you’re failing.
But let’s face it: design is art. Designers are artists. The best art has always been
political. And some of the best graphic artists have been moved, time and again, to
vote their conscience and express their dissent in the form of rambunctious social
commentary. By adding to the “unofficial voice,” as critic Liz McQuiston put it, they
help balance and challenge the “official” voice of the status quo.
The unofficial voice reflects what society cares most deeply about (as distinct
from the way it lives). Over time, it amounts to a snapshot album of what made
people laugh, what made them
angry, what made them march.
The roots of graphic agitation
wend back thousands of years; the
ruins of Ancient Rome and Pompeii
yielded graffiti-like evidence of a
politicized voice of the people. But
only since the printing press has the
discipline had real, lasting impact.
And only within this century has
graphic design been a “profession”
with form and content—though
“professional” probably wasn’t the
first word people reached for to
describe the pulse of energy emerging
from Europe in the 1920s.
Dada. The word was chosen at ran-
dom from a dictionary. As an art
movement, Dada stood for disorder,
nonsense, dark child’s play (Think of
Duchamp’s urinal, Tristan Tzara’s
word-salad poetry, Jean Arp’s bits of
colored paper arranged by the laws of
chance.) The slaughter of millions by
the most “civilized” countries on
earth had bred disillusionment
beyond words. Spiritual chaos found
its analog in the visual chaos of Dada.
Dada didn’t believe in much, least of
all itself. “Like everything in life,” said
Tzara, “Dada is useless.”
Kurt Schwitters and Theo Van Doesburg
Kleine Dada soirée (Little Dada evening): Germany, 1923
 graphic agitation constructivism
>> NO DESIGN STYLE of any era more instantly embodies the spirit of revolution
than Constructivism. The Constructivists—part of a broad social movement that sprang
from the Bolshevik uprising of 1917— considered themselves key players in the campaign
to build a new society. Their art and design, reflected it. Constructivism was the new visu-
al language of hope: bold color, thrusting diagonals, dynamic photomontage. Abstract
forms lay cheek-by-jowl with utilitarian symbols like rivets and airplane wings. The graph-
ic artist’s job, like that of a street proselytizer or a circus barker, was to catch and hold the
attention of the common factory worker, the better to deliver “the good news of change.”
(Agitprop is now dead, but it isn’t. Its influence can still be seen in the posters and ban-
ners grassroots protest groups depend on to get their message quickly off the page and
into the heads of passing commuters.)
The Constructivists were agitating for change in a hurry. The German Bauhaus artists,
meanwhile, were forging change more methodically. But what happened to Constructiv-
ism — Stalin squashed it after a dozen years and officially “replaced” it with Soviet
Realism — would happen to the Bauhaus. Hitler (a failed art student) had some graphic
ideas of his own. His “chamber of culture” cranked out some of the most powerful,
cohesive imagemaking ever conceived. Blown off the streets by the Nazi firehose, the
German avant-garde scattered worldwide — actually propagating graphic agitation more
effectively than had they been allowed to stay. Some artists, like John Heartfield, dedicat-
ed much of the rest of their lives to hammering the leaders of the Third Reich. Heartfield
used photomontage as his primary ammunition.

Alexander Rodchenko
Lengiz books on all subjects! Poster, 1925 .

20 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 world war ii

John Heartfield, Hurray, the butter is gone! Germany, 1935

Additional text: Goering, in his Hamburg speech:
“Iron has always made a country strong, butter and lard only make people fat.”

NO.27 autumn/99 21
 graphic agitation vietnam
The WORLD NEVER REALIZED quite how viscerally powerful captured images
could be until the Vietnam War, whose resistance movement leveraged the talents of
artists like Seymour Chwast, Tomi Ungerer, Jules Feiffer and the Dutch group Wild Plak-
ken. For Americans, Vietnam marked the beginning of the era of cultural dissent at
home. The poster below by the Art Workers’ Coalition, depicting the Song-My massacre,
was unveiled in 1970 and had immediate impact. Here was the raw meat on the road.
The Q-and-A format invited a dialogue between the people and their government, but
the main question here was rhetorical: Does America really have the stomach for this
campaign? (When the board of New York’s Museum of Modern Art refused to sponsor the
poster, the AWC protested in front of one of the great pieces of graphic agitation
of all time, Picasso’s Guernica.)
About this time, the familiar “peace” sign, made famous by Britain’s Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament in 1958, was being widely employed by hippies to protest the
war (interestingly enough, it was seized and détourned by the pro-war lobby, who saw
in those three straight lines the “footprint of the American chicken”). The photograph
hadn’t so much surmounted as augmented the sign and the drawn line in the graphic

>>
agitator’s kit. As cartoonists have always known, some abstract concepts are best
caught in their complexity with the fish-eye lens of caricature.

Art Workers Coalition, Jon Hendricks, Irving Petlin, and Frazier Dougherty
22 ADBUSTERS NO.27 Q. And babies? A. And babies. USA, 1970.
Tomi Ungerer, Eat, USA, 1967.
NO.27 autumn/99 23
 BM
B M BATTLE OF THE MIND
Skulls of massacred Tutsi civilians are placed into bags after a memorial in Kaduha, Rwanda.
less is more in rwanda
The Rwandan Liberation Army learned a valuable
public relations lesson earlier this year when they became the
objects of international media scrutiny and earned an official
condemnation from the United Nations.
All the hubbub was in response to the Rwandan rebels’ new
“high profile” PR strategy, which they premiered on March 1 by
bludgeoning eight foreign tourists to death at Bwindi National
Park in Uganda. Two of the victims were executives at Intel, one
of the world’s largest computer hardware manufacturers.
The new campaign was an immediate success, splashing the
militant Hutus all over the front pages of the New York Times,
the Washington Post, and other mega-publicity sources.
The Rwandan Liberation Army’s new strategy replaced a less
24 ADBUSTERS NO.27
Photo: Reuters, Corinne Dufka – Archive Photos 
successful long-term campaign that involved the killing of over
500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus during the early to mid
‘90s. The publicity generated by this act of genocide was incon-
sequential when compared to the new method, earning the
militant Hutus sparse news coverage and the condemnation of
only a few human rights organizations.
The Rwandan Liberation Army can clearly thank their new
“less is more” PR policy for this meteoric rise in recognition.
The principle is simple enough: As far as MSNBC, ABC, CBS,
the BBC, and the New York Times are concerned, the lives of a
few Western executives are worth infinitely more than those of
over half a million natives of Uganda, the Congo and Rwanda.
— Joel Tannenbaum
 BM

FEELING CHINA’S PAIN

If the first Advertising Wonder of the World were
declared tomorrow, all eyes would turn to the awesome gap
between marketing and reality created by the Nike corpora-
tion’s latest ad campaign in China.
Aimed at China’s urban “little emperors” — the results of
the crowded nation’s only-child laws — the planned Nike ad
barrage aims to revive Pacific Rim sales that crashed during the
catastrophic “correction” in the Asian Tiger economies.
The $9.5-billion company’s recovery plan is simple: hit the
emotions of Chinese youth, and hit ‘em hard. Quoted in Adver-
tising Age, one marketing exec described the targets’ weakness.
“They face a sharp need for recognition, a dream for stardom,
that makes western teen angst seem like a gentle ache.”
The pitch to the rich is Nike’s first major ad campaign in New from Nike: A market share in Chinese teen angst
China since 1997, and it has stunned critics of the company’s
labor practices. Nike has been under constant assault for its fail- found that conditions had worsened since 1995, with Nike
ure to ensure fair wages, labor rights and safety standards workers suffering indignities ranging from forced overtime to
among its subcontractors in Asia, and Chinese workers pro- mandatory calisthenics, from on-the-job fines to safety condi-
duce fully a third of top brand sports shoes. tions below even China’s shaky standards.
“It’s what we’ve come to expect of the Nike ethic,” Trim Bis- Bissell says it’s “astonishing” to see Nike laying bare the
sell of the US-based Campaign for Labor Rights told Adbusters. yawning chasm between its wealthy, urban consumers and its
“Extract from the many to benefit the few.” exploited migrant workers, most being women between the
The most recent comprehensive report on working condi- ages of 18 and 23.
tions in Chinese shoe factories is a 1997 study by two “Maybe this is Nike’s commemoration of Tiananmen
independent labor watchdogs based in Hong Kong. Observers Square,” he says.

Targeting the inner child

The last time Kool-Aid Man had a corporate makeover,
the “amusingly clumsy” character emerged “sturdier,” with
a “hip new ‘90s look” that is “‘ultra-cool’ in the eyes of young
children.”
This year, the pitcher-headed mascot hopped into his “cus-
tomized convertible” to put his “more agile” form to a new
corporate use: leader of a guerrilla marketing campaign aimed
at branding a neighborhood tradition.
In a press release earlier this year, the Kraft food company
urged young venture capitalists in the stagnant driveway lem-
onade stand industry to put their investment nickels behind the
well-known Kool-Aid Man logo.
Kids interested in claiming their share of the 563 million gal-
lons of Kool-Aid moved each year were encouraged to send for
the Authentic Kool-Aid Stand Kit. The franchise comes free
with such marketing hints as featuring a flavor of the day,
dressing in Kool-Aid colored clothes, and using sidewalk chalk
to mark up the ‘hood with the trademark Kool-Aid smile.
Busted for illegal chalk graffiti? Stung by client claims after
serving the product with unwashed hands? Hey, Kool-Aid Man
is a rainbow-shirted funster, not a lawyer.
As for the sidewalk chalk and Kool-Aid pitchers, glasses,
beach towels etc., they’re all available – for a fee – from the
Kool-Aid website. “Oh Yeah!”™
Branding a neighborhood tradition

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 25
 BM

Aim higher.
You can stare at ads in the bathroom
and watch Channel 1 in class or...
you can aim higher and make your
school an ad-free zone.

Campaign for commercial free schools

www.adbusters.org

26 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 BM

media busters muffled

In Canada, one of the world’s most concen-
trated print media markets, direct-action
media critics are becoming the story that dares
not go to press.
In January, reporter Mike Roberts of British
Columbia’s Province newspaper went to work
on a story about Guerrilla Media, a covert band
of Canadian culture jammers who publicize
their media criticisms by wrapping main-
stream newspapers in mock covers as they
await sale in distribution boxes.
With research complete, Roberts sat down
with his editors to discuss the approach he
should take to writing the piece. “We’d rather
you didn’t,” is the response he recalls.
Roberts says his editors at the paper —
owned by Conrad Black, the media titan who
controls 60% of Canada’s dailies — told him
Post publisher Don Babick and editor Ken Whyte: We’re still waiting for their comment
they didn’t want to give publicity to an organi-
zation that breaks the law. Given that Province
reporters regularly cover such protests as sit-
ins and blockades, the reason Guerrilla Media
was made an exception is “an interesting question,” says Roberts. held, O’Brien chose to duck and cover: “Possibly,” she said.
Reporters tread carefully around their employers’ vested inter- Noam de Plume, a pseudonymous spokesperson for Guerrilla
ests, Roberts notes. “I was cognizant that this story would be a Media, says reporters and editors seem to be taking a see-no-evil,
tricky one to get through,” he says. “That’s the first time that situ- speak-no-evil approach to Conrad Black’s most confrontational
ation has arisen with me at the paper. That’s the first time critics to prevent run-ins with corporate management.
I’ve been asked to not do a story.” “The gatekeeping, when it has to be, is very controlling,” says
Adele Weder, a Vancouver-based freelancer, experienced a de Plume. “They’re saying the criticism that we’re leveling at
similar Blackout after accepting an assignment from Conrad them is something they don’t want to discuss in a public way.”
Black’s new Canada-wide daily, the National Post. This time, the Scott Uzelman of NewsWatch Canada, an academic research
topic was Adbusters magazine, including its campaign against group that monitors media “blind spots,” says the Blackout of
Black, the Post, and corporate concentration of media ownership. culture-jamming critics is a blunt example of monopoly media’s
In May, Weder told Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn that her inability to report fairly on its own powers and responsibilities.
article had been accepted by her editors and would be published Last year, NewsWatch published a study of how coverage of Con-
once she gathered quotes from Post editor-in-chief Ken Whyte rad Black’s empire in a major daily newspaper changed after that
and from Black himself. Shortly thereafter, Weder was told paper was bought by Black. Not surprisingly, they found the
the story would not be going to press paper’s coverage became far less critical; what’s more, that paper
“They told me they killed it,” said Weder. “I’m disappointed took a year to acknowledge the group’s study, finally printing an
with the cancellation of the piece, but it’s not my place to op-ed on the subject in the weekend magazine section.
comment on what might have happened.” Uzelman argues that it all points to the need to revisit the tired
In the Post offices, “killed” is considered too harsh a word. idea that government interference poses the greatest threat to
Harriet O’Brien, the section editor in charge of Weder’s journalists’ freedom to report dissenting opinions. “The same
assignment, says the piece was “held over” — so far for three ideal isn’t applied to the media themselves, which are increasing-
months and counting. ly large corporations,” Uzelman notes.
O’Brien did acknowledge that the story warranted internal dis- So Canadians shouldn’t hold their breath for a Conrad Black
cussion that went at least as high as Whyte (neither newspaper to assign an investigative series on the effects of
Whyte nor Black could be contacted by presstime). “We estab- media concentration?
lished that Adbusters was launching a campaign against the “If that happened, I would probably drop dead with surprise,”
Post and especially Conrad Black,” says O’Brien. “There was Uzelman says.
a sensitivity there.”
Asked whether that sensitivity played a role in the piece being — James MacKinnon

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 27
 BM
What fans at the stadium saw...
what is reality?
“We don’t have competition!” Denny Wilkinson barks
into a speaker-phone from his office in Lawrenceville, New Jer-
sey. He’s describing the market position of his business, but he
might as well be delivering his take on the moral landscape of
marketing.
Wilkinson is president and CEO of Princeton Video Image
(PVI), the world’s pioneer in virtual advertising and product
placement for TV and film. Using technology first adapted to
sports programming, his company specializes in ads that are,
as Wilkinson puts it, “embedded in the magic of the game or
the magic of the show.”
Big networks like Warner Bros. and CBS are working to
push PVI’s “magic” further into the living rooms and bed-
rooms of TV nations everywhere. As early as this fall, virtual
products could be added to off-network syndications of such
prime time staples as Friends and E.R.
To understand the potential reach of virtual product place-
ment, picture a sit-com character walking past the window of a
local diner in New York City. To Wilkinson, the scene is a
chance to use computer editing to turn the diner into a Hard
Rock Café or a Burger King – and to turn a buck in the process.
The soda the actor sips could become a clearly identifiable
Pepsi. Random parked cars could be replaced by Pontiacs. Pass-
ing buses and taxis could have sideboards added. Street signs
might read “Microsoft Avenue.” And every one of these placed
ads could be changed and changed again – and no channel surf-
er could escape their influence.
But what about consumer complaints?
“We haven’t gotten any of those,” Wilkinson says with
delight.
It was left to Advertising Age to challenge Wilkinson’s breezy
arrogance. Earlier this year, the industry magazine’s usually
cheerleading editors warned against “a new level of commer-
cialism” that virtual advertising could introduce. Wilkinson
28 ADBUSTERS NO.27
What fans see on TV.
responded with a peppery letter to the editor, but Ad Age edited
out his brashest and most honest statement of the modern mar-
keter’s worldview:
“On one hand, TV shows are striving for realism, so that
viewers can form an affinity with the characters and the situa-
tions in which they find themselves. All too often, though, these
characters are seen using no-name products, whether it’s food,
drink, clothing, or other consumable or durable goods. That’s
not realism in the eyes of today’s TV audience. Today’s viewers
are brand-oriented consumers. Far from compromising cre-
ativity and content, postproduction insertion supports them
and may even make programs more saleable to sponsors and
more appealing to viewers.”
That’s Denny Wilkinson’s world, and he’s on top of it.
“When I go into my bathroom I don’t have generic mouthwash
and toothpaste and shaving cream,” he says. “I have Listerine
and I have Crest and I have Gillette.”
The few and lonely voices that oppose virtual ads are naive
and behind-the-times, Wilkinson explains. He declares his kin-
ship with the “wired generation,” the kids that are growing up
interacting with the dozens of ads crammed into every corner
and cursor of the world wide web. Like them, he says, he is
“astute” and “comfortable” in the commercial tide, like some
modern Taoist following the path of running water.
Does he feel any lingering nostalgia for an age when a TV
viewer could tell the ads from the “editorial”? For the days when
every product or space that appeared on film wasn't evaluated
in terms of potential for commercial encroachment?
“No. Why should I?” he says with exasperation. “That’s reali-
ty! That’s how the world has evolved.”
— James MacKinnon
in the name of the father
by Will Novosedlik
People seem to think that branding is a recent
invention, something discovered by Tom Peters and
turned into a self-help article in Fast Company entitled
“A Brand Called You.” But like many great discoveries,
branding showed up on most people’s radar long after it
had become part of the warp and woof of our daily lives.
In case anybody didn’t notice, it was invented by the
Catholic church 2,000 years ago. I’m not being face-
tious. Think about it. What are the components of a
great brand? Well, let’s start with the most visible one: a
logo. Enter the crucifix. Bold, simple, easy to reproduce
with a finger in the sand or a couple of twigs lashed
together with string — which in the days of early Chris-
tianity were the only means of reproduction available.
As the means of reproduction became more sophisticat-
ed, and the church became more widespread, the logo
turned up everywhere. Fifteen hundred years later,
there was one on every street corner in Europe, exposure
that most corporations of today, with the exception of Coca
C o l a
can only salivate over.
Another critical requirement for a successful brand is that
it’s got to be an emotional proposition. Coke promises refresh-
ment; FedEx promises overnight delivery. Both are emotional
in their own way: it’s hot and I’ve got to have a Coke (especially
if I’m in Eastern Europe, where it will cost me a day’s pay but
will make me look American); I’m on a deadline and if my cli-
ent doesn’t get this hard copy by tomorrow morning, my ass is
grass, so call FedEx right away! What did Christianity promise?
Salvation. The crucifix was imbued with enough emotional sig-
nificance that to be seen with it could mean instant death. But
early Christians believed that death would deliver them from
the vale of tears called life, and lead them to everlasting joy in
Heaven. What a product: eternal bliss!
Most great brands yearn for global dominance. The Catholic
church was the first to achieve it. When threatened by the emer-
gence of Protestantism, the Church sent out the world’s first
great marketing team: the Jesuits. From the boreal forests of
Canada to the Shogunates of Japan, the Jesuits insinuated
themselves into local culture and won market share around the
world. That Catholicism is still one of the world’s largest reli-
gions is a testament to their marketing skills.
Another critical attribute of any good brand is a clear point of
difference. Early Christianity differed from its parent, Judaism,
in its belief that Christ was the messiah. It differed from Greek
and Roman religion in its belief in one god. It also differed from
the Roman philosophy of life by condemning the shallow mate-
rialism of the here and now in favor of the profound spiritual
joy of the hereafter. And in ancient Rome, you could always tell
the Christians apart from everybody else: they were the ones
being eaten by the lions.
Today, brands are con-
stantly refreshed with
schemes to build and
maintain loyalty. They’re
called premium incen-
tives. Things like air
miles, or discounts off of
other branded goods with
points accumulated by
building up credit through
ongoing purchases of the
host brand. The Coke
Card offers such entice-
ments, as do most credit
cards. It’s their way of buy-
ing your buying power,
and keeping you loyal. A
new idea? Not really. For
centuries, the Catholic church offered such incentives: they
, were called “indulgences.”
For donations made to the church, (or extreme acts
of penance) one could purchase the right to less time spent
in Purgatory. For the right price, you could bypass the fiery
way-station altogether and go straight to Heaven. Now
there’s a premium.
Of course, all of Christian faith began with a purchase. We
are taught that Christ paid for our sins with his own blood. The
brutality of this sacrificial transaction is the climax of Nobel
prize-winning Jose Saramago’s The Gospel According to Jesus
Christ, a skeptical re-writing of the New Testament from the
point of view of the Son of God himself. In the testament that
all Christians grew up with, Christ’s last words were, “Forgive
them Father, for they know not what they do.” In Saramago’s
version, they are addressed to the crowd: “Forgive Him, for He
knows not what He does.” Saramago’s Christ realizes that God
has bought market share at the cost of millions of innocent
lives. What the Son of God didn’t fathom was that his Father
was buying brand loyalty for as long as there were people
around to make the sign of the cross.
The point of all of this irreverence is that branding is not a
capitalist invention. It’s been in development for two millennia.
You may not believe in the brand called Jesus, but it’s hard to
imagine the last two thousand years without him. And if you’re
a culture jammer who wants to topple capitalism, hit the books:
you’ve got a lot of history homework to do.
Will Novosedlik makes brands by day and tears them apart by
night. A principal in the design and branding firm Russell Inc.,
he has written on these topics for Eye (UK), Applied Arts
(Toronto), and Print (New York).
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 29
design success
>> You come up with a stunning package
design for a killer product. Your boss is pleased.
The client is thrilled. Your design is entered in
and wins a prize from the American Institute of
Graphic Arts. The certificate is hung on the office
wall for everyone to see. You’re interviewed by
design magazines and featured on websites.
Your colleagues leave clever voice-mail messag-
es of congratulations. You bask in the glory, and
you get a raise. Your firm sends you on an
all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to attend
the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ America:
Cult and Culture conference.
Bravo! You can now count yourself a member
of the graphic arts community — one of five hun-
dred thousand designers, creative directors and
visual communicators around the world, all with
a common purpose, all glorifying the virtues of
consumer capitalism, all tripping over each other
to kiss corporate ass. What do responsibility or
ethics have to do with any of this? We’re talking
creativity here — giving order to information,
form to ideas, beauty to expression. This isn’t
about politics. Let the “helping professions”
change the world if they think they still can.
They have their job, and you have yours.
The expression “...tripping over each other to kiss corporate [America’s] ass,” from
Greasing the Wheels of Capitalism With Style and Taste, by Jeffery Keedy in Emigre magazine.
★
r
ne
win
Brand Design Competition
Miscellaneous – Redesign
Brand Design Association,
an Affiliate of the American Institute of Graphic Arts

02
Winston cigarettes
Client: RJ Reynolds
Design Firm: Duffy Design
and Interactive

“The assignment was to take

current Winston cigarette pack-
aging and revitalize it.
The old packaging seemed to be
for an older audience . . .
we kept much of the Winston
brand equities while moving
it to a smart, fresher,
younger position.”
34 ADBUSTERS NO.27
photo: AFP – Douglas CURRAN
THE THEATER OF SURPRISE
In the back pages of the newspaper, you read that the
world’s great modern explorers – environmental scientists –
have discovered a new mountain range: mountains of pollution
that tower 3,000 meters above the Indian Ocean and cover an
area the size of America with a thick brown haze.
You have more pressing problems. The wettest summer on
record has ruined your roof and garden, and the kids have sea-
sonal affective disorder. Or maybe it’s the hottest summer ever,
a thermal inversion has filled your city with smog, and your
favorite lakeside retreat is ringed with raging forest fires.
What the hell is going on? Is it El Niño again? La Niña? Statis-
tical blips that keep recurring? Is there somehow a link between
the mountains of pollution off Sri Lanka and the record-break-
ing tornado that trashed your high school reunion?
These are everyday questions within a web of ecological
connections so infinitely complex that we may never understand
it. WorldWatch senior editor Chris Bright calls it The Matrix,
and it can react with unpredictable and phenomenal force. “It’s
just extraordinary how wrong things can go,” Bright says.
In 1984, sociologist Charles Perrow wrote Normal Accidents,
a study of the ways that systems go sour. Imagine, for example,
two ships on the open sea on a clear summer day. To create a
disaster, Perrow notes, everything that can go wrong, must.
Time and time again, it does. Leaving a busy port, a captain
turns off the crazily beeping radar and forgets to turn it back on.
His eyeglasses give him a headache, so he takes them off.
endgames
A country music station jams the radio frequency. One boat zigs
and the other zags. Homer Simpson is watching the dials; shit
happens; a boat sinks. Since the dawn of the dugout canoe we’ve
been trying to find a fix for failure in this simplest of systems,
and we’ve never succeeded.
We continue to hope, though, that when it comes to the apoc-
alyptic crunch, we can fix the weather, reclaim the climate, and
retrofit the web of life. We dream of high tech ways to move
mountains of smog.
“That sort of ‘end of the pipe’ approach is just doomed,”
says Bright, noting that even “green” technological fixes have
proven unpredictable in The Matrix. We raise windmills for sus-
tainable energy – turns out they “cuisinart” migratory birds.
We build car pool lanes – drivers love the quick commute, move
to the ‘burbs, and our cities sprawl. Is there any way to bring
order to the chaos?
“Radically reduce consumption of both energy and resourc-
es,” Bright answers. Eliminate points of pressure
on The Matrix, and fewer system reactions will occur. Two
boats can’t collide if only one is on the water.
There is another choice: to sit back and enjoy the drama of
the dawning age of “normal” accidents. Marvel as climate
change launches epidemics; stand in awe as coral reef pollution
causes fish stock collapse which causes famine.
Bright calls it “the theater of surprise.” Now playing:
a comedy of errors. >>>
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 35
endgames
Tossed Salad
What if an ecosystem accident occurred in the food
chain? In 1975, North America’s elite molecular biologists
recognized the risk and drafted unprecedented guidelines to
avert disaster in the emerging field of genetic research. No dis-
ease- or cancer-causing organisms would be used in
“gene-splicing,” nor any genes that “code” for toxins, plant
pathogens or drug resistance. They also forbid any deliberate
release of a genetically modified life form into the environment.
The biologists’ actions were a high point of what some now
call “the complexity ethic.” It was an ethic, however, that scien-
tists immediately proved they could mutate and resist.
Today, genetically modified plants coded for pest toxins and
herbicide resistance have been deliberately released to sprout
from the raw earth of millions of acres of farmland. The com-
plexity ethic, meanwhile, has faded in the science labs and
spread to the general populace.
The campaign against genetically modified foods is arguably
the first political movement rooted overwhelmingly in complexi-
ty. The resistance to transgenics is not based on proven dangers.
Instead, citizens’ anger and mistrust is based on strong evidence
that muddling with systems as complex as genetics and ecology
will result in crises that cannot be predicted.
“There’s no telling what’s going to happen once new life
forms get out in the environment,” says Ronnie Cummins,
director of the U.S. Campaign for Food Safety. “It’s not like a
chemical spill that we can clean up. This stuff, we’re going to
have to worry about it for an eternity.”
36 ADBUSTERS NO.27
Corel stock
Consider Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt , a toxin-producing bacte-
rium and humble child of evolution. Biodegradable in sunlight
and harmless to humans, Bt is considered the perfect poison for
the borers, weevils and worms that are a modern farmer’s foes.
As journalist Ingeborg Boyens notes in her book Unnatural
Harvest, Bt in small doses has even become “the backbone of
organic agriculture.”
Now the bacterium’s genes have been spliced with corn,
potato and cotton plants, every cell of every plant constantly pro-
ducing Bt toxins. They are growing throughout North America,
and this, say activists, is what might happen next. The new
plants’ pollen will spread to fertilize ‘natural’ crops and closely
related weed species. Bt toxins will begin to appear in more and
more places in the ecology, allowing pests to build immunity.
As generations of resistant pests emerge, Bt will become useless
to organic farmers, encouraging a new era of pesticide and her-
bicide treatment. Only one result is so far certain: that the
pushers of transgenics have seized the political agenda just as
organic farming seemed poised to simplify the systems of agri-
culture.
The implications are biological, social, cultural. But the big-
gest problem is that the biggest problem might come out of left
field. Can we solve every complexity before an ecosystem acci-
dent? The answer depends on your view of the matrix of life.
“They say that living organisms are just like machines, and
they move ahead on that precept,” says Cummins. “But the
cutting edge scientists know that is utter bullshit.” >>>
 endgames

Accelerating Techno-waves
Source - The Economist, Feb.20,1999

Water Power Steam Electricity Petrochemicals Digital Networks

Pace of innovation

Textiles Rail Chemicals Electronics Software

Iron Steel Internal Combustion Engine Aviation New Media

FIRST WAVE SECOND WAVE THIRD WAVE FOURTH WAVE FIFTH WAVE

1785 1845 1900 1950 1990 1999 2020

60 years 55 years 50 years 40 years 30 years

coming of age
It was the first technological frontline. The
perfection of the steam engine and the spinning jenny launched
the Industrial Revolution – “the conquest of nature” – loosely
set between 1785 and 1845. By 1811, the revolution’s internal
resistance had boiled over: a series of workshop raids in central
England launched the movement remembered as “the Lud-
dites.” In their first week of action, 1,000 followers of the
mythical King Ludd destroyed at least 70 of the weaving frames
and looms that had sparked a crisis of unemployment, poverty,
and community dislocation. Before the Luddites faded four
years later, over 1,150 frames would be ruined, 40 factories
attacked, 30 Luddites killed, and over 16,000 soldiers called into
battle.
With the second wave of steam – worldwide industrialization
– came the spread of communism, socialism, unionism, anar-
chism and other movements that aimed to redistribute the
productive wealth. But these movements, too, contained a
doubt of technological advance. In 1905, the Industrial Workers
of the World foresaw the age of the global market and braced
with a global union, yet their most enduring symbol is a black
cat, arched and hissing – the symbol of industrial sabotage.
As an age of electricity and chemicals turned to an age of
nuclear power and fossil fuels, each step was followed by
resistance: environmentalists, anti-nuclear activists, the
drop-out culture of the hippies, the situationists and their
warning that the conquest of nature was being replaced by
the commercialization of life itself.
Joseph Schumpeter was dead by the time the situationists
were hurling cobblestones at police in the streets of Paris in
1968. But it was this Austrian economist who first showed that
technology came and passed like swells on the horizons of time,
wave after wave of industrial revolution. Schumpeter also saw
that those waves were accelerating. His first industrial wave –
the age of steam, textiles and iron – lasted 60 years. Schumpeter
died in 1950, the year The Economist marks as the beginning of
the fourth wave, an age of petrochemicals, electronics and avia-
tion that would last just 40 years.
Our age, the Information Age, began in 1990 with the flood
of digital network, software and new media technology. It is set
to end by 2020, if not sooner.
Schumpeter measured technological advance, yet the waves
of human resistance, too, have accelerated. Today, biotechnolo-
gy emerges into a world that confronts it with a new complexity
ethic; hackers evolve as fast as digital networks. Now the Infor-
mation Age has hardened into a virtual era of brands and
symbols, an industrial battle for our psychogeography. But this
time, the troops and the resistance – the corporate designer
and the culture jammer – have emerged at the same moment
to occupy the same historical space.
All that remains is for one to fall from the balance.
– James MacKinnon

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 37
endgames

black like me
Unless you use it to scrape ice from your
car window in winter, you might as well throw your
gold card in the trash right now. As a status sign,
it’s up there with, oh, a high school diploma. About
one in 10 Amex cardholders has a gold card. How
exclusive is that? Even the platinum card—a guar-
anteed
panty-remover only a few years ago — doesn’t cut it
anymore because regular people can get their
hands on one.
What you want now is the new Amex Centurion,
the ne plus ultra of credit cards. Color: sable black.

photo: Julian Makey, Rex features – ponopresse

Credit: unlimited. And you can let the growing
balance ride month after month because, hey,
you’re obviously good for the dough.
Amex calls it the world’s most exclusive card.
Membership is “by invitation.”
Who gets invited?
The highest rollers among current platinum
card holders are grandfathered in. Otherwise, you
have to be, well, somebody. And if you have to ask
whether you are, you’re not. Income-wise, Presi-
dent Clinton would probably qualify – just. But the
President can’t qualify because the card has yet to
be launched outside Britain. (Even Hollywood
actors can’t get one — except Emma Thompson,
and she probably wouldn’t want one.) In America,
that gives it the added allure of the unattainable,
like a ticket to a sold-out show.
What the Centurion card buys you, Amex stress-
es, is great service. Standing behind the card is a
passel of Amex employees known as the “can-do-
anything” team who will organize whatever kind
of party you want, in no time flat with a champagne
chaser. In the unlikely event that your Amex black
does not get you instant entrée to any of the most
hoity-toity clubs anywhere in the world, the sup-
port team will snap into action and lean on the club
owner to let you in, park your car and massage
your scalp.
What the black Centurion card really buys you,
of course, is envy. It says to the world, I am a person
of single-thread linen and truffle lunches. I Matter.
And you, by delicious extension, Don’t.

38 ADBUSTERS NO.27
Photo: AP Photo / PA
THE END OF HISTORY?
If there were any doubts that Bill Clinton and Tony
Blair are the toughest hombres in Dodge, the Kosovo war laid
them to rest. The NATO precision bombing campaign broke
Serbia’s will and Milosevic backed down, in the end, just as
Clinton had predicted.
American military might is an awesome thing to behold, so
surpassingly dominant that the US no longer needs to send its
troops into what Madeleine Albright called “non-permissive
environments.” America has the B-2 bomber (assured destruc-
tion from the comfortably safe height of 30,000 feet), not to
mention a generation of kids developing, via video games, the
reflexes to fly it.
The B-2 is but one of what the New York Times recently identi-
fied as the three great symbols of American global domination
– the other two being the Pentium III microchip and the US
buck. Military supremacy, technological supremacy, economic
supremacy — reinforcing a global consumer capitalism run-
ning pretty much uncontested. Goodnight Mrs. Callabash,
wherever you are.
In his seminal work, The End of History and the Last Man,
Francis Fukuyama floated the idea that maybe human history
endgames
isn’t cyclical after all. Maybe there’s actually a direction to it, and
therefore an endpoint, and when humanity reaches that ideolog-
ically stable state, where enough people have enough prosperity
and enough freedom, it will simply stop evolving, having
arrived.
Substitute “consumer capitalism” for “liberal democracy”
and Bill and Tony’s world is Fukuyama’s world. The affluent
nations have never had it so good, and the rest of the world wants
in. The American Way is Everyone’s Way, forever and ever.
There’s only one problem. A closer reading of Fukuyama (or
Hegel’s concept of “Universal History,” from which Fukuyama
drew much inspiration) suggests it can’t happen. There is no
end to history. Just about the time the penultimate human being
has blissed out on shallow materialism, there drifts into the
frame the Nietzschean “last man.” He alone sees the emptiness
at the core of existence. He pumps for meaning and, finding
none, raises bloody hell. And the “last man” sends the world
spinning predictably back into chaos. ●
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 39
 graphic agitation national politics

>> WOULD YOU TRUST THESE MEN to lead your country? That’s
the question political campaign poster artists must ask themselves as
they embark on that consummately American pastime of selling the
candidate (rather than, say, the party, or the issues). The political art of
the last 40 years can be read as the story of the nation. Postwar Ameri-
ca’s stage-by-stage coming-of-age, from the naive pragmatism
of the ‘50s (with its no-nonsense, sans-serif typefaces) to the furious
cynicism of the ‘90s (with its “negative” TV ads and poll-driven image-
creation) spills out of the pictures used to boost the men running for
US president. Over time, the level of visual complexity rises—and with
it, the level of hucksterism.
Eisenhower, the first presidential candidate to hire an ad agency
to help him with his imagemaking, must have been persuaded that,
graphically speaking, less is more. As with selling shirts or detergent,

1952 – Meehan-Tooker Co., Inc. (designer) 1960 – Artist Unknown

40 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 clarity was paramount in this era. This, folks, is your father.
Kennedy, the first candidate to truly exploit the medium of TV, leads
with a smile that’s almost rakish. This isn’t your father. It’s your next
boyfriend. (Even if you’re a guy.) The ‘60s are looking like a
ride you can’t wait to take.
Johnson’s people have given him a jingle suitable for the hundreds
of thousands of pins and bumper-stickers that will support his cam-
paign. Unlike previous candidates, who have stood proudly in front of
their country, LBJ seems actually to spring organically from it.
Nixon is trying way too hard. To an unprecedented degree, he relied
on his handlers to create an image for him, rather than simply present-
ing himself as he was (probably a wise decision). But the sheer
busyness of the graphic makes the viewer suspicious, as one might be
about a guy who gives you complicated answers to the simplest
questions. The candidate has now been utterly commodified.

1964 – Artist Unknown 1968 – J. Michaelson (designer)

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 41
 graphic agitation feminism
>> A GRAPHIC EVENT marked what many consider the official beginning
of mainstream American feminism. It was the appearance on the newsstands, in
1970, of the first issue of Gloria Steinem’s Ms.
The magazine’s photos and illustrations have, over the years, reflected as many
graphic styles as there have been voices of feminism — from the flat-out polemical
to pop-cultural riffs with a lighter, wryer touch. Feminists raised the level of dis-
course about the politics of power, and graphic agitation rose to meet it. In the ‘80s,
the hoardings and billboards of Manhattan bore the demanding poster work of the
feminist artist Barbara Kruger, whose investigation of sexuality and gender roles
was informed by the theory of the French post-structuralists. (Kruger’s We Don’t
Need Another Hero, below, takes apart Norman Rockwell’s America.) If Kruger was
flying in the ether, the Guerrilla Girls, no less provocatively, were down in the dirt,
papering the city under cover of darkness with their funny agitations. Always acting
anonymously, they called themselves “the conscience of the art world.” Their
design work was sometimes crude, sometimes amateurish, and usually memorable.
“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met? asked a poster about the dearth
of work by female artists in that New York museum. The words appeared above
Ingres’s famous reclining nude Odalisque, who now wore a gorilla mask.

Barbara Kruger, We Don’t Need Another Hero, USA, 1989.

42 ADBUSTERS NO.27
Ms. Magazine cover, USA, July 1972

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 43
 Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse,
10th Biennial Wilderness Conference Poster, USA, 1967

44 ADBUSTERS NO.27
the environment graphic agitation

>> IT’S HARD TO SAY what image is most closely linked to the beginnings of the
environmental movement. W. Eugene Smith’s photos of babies born with severe birth
defects near mercury-poisoned Minamata Bay? The first shot of the earth taken from the
moon? Or maybe it wasn’t a print image at all but a TV commercial: the stoic American
Indian contemplates the desecration of the earth, and a single tear runs down his cheek.
Whatever got it going, environmentalism just continued gathering steam through
the ‘70s, as artists worldwide lent their design support, often using those seminal
photographs in their work. What made this campaign unique was that there was no
identifiable target group, as such — not the patriarchy, not the government; the enemy
was us. The media-driven beginnings of a truly global awareness, and sympathy for the
plight of the Third World, fed environmental concerns—and vice-versa. Designers com-
mented on the world’s unequal distribution of wealth. Australian artists spoke up for
the aboriginals. The sky turned bruise-yellow over Los Angeles, gasoline rationing
was initiated, and a new level of gravity found its way into graphic discourse about
the American lifestyle.
The environmental protest movement is still cresting. Environmental problems
have just kept improbably coming, like mad clowns from a Volkswagen: acid rain,
ozone depletion, PCB contamination, genetic pollution. Some of the simplest things
(dirty water) still pose the biggest health problems, and some of the simplest images
are still the most effective weapons of agitation.
Doug Agaki and Kimberly Powell,
Save San Francisco Bay, USA, 1992

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 45
 graphic agitation consumerism
>> THE MILLENNIAL ERA. Now we sit transfixed, swamped by data
and image. The typical highly skilled, but utterly apolitical, graphic designer,
fishes with a drift-net, incessantly sampling the high and low, the past
and present, the iconic and the new.
Into this climate march the Culture Jammers. Leaning on the groundbreaking
work of the Dadaists, Surrealists, the Fluxists and above all the Situationists
(who were among the first to show human beings taken over by the ambient
culture) culture jammers position themselves as the front guard of a movement
that might be called “Cultural Activism.” In America, veteran graphic jammers
like Robbie Conal are joined by subvertisers hammering away at the rampant
consumerism now so entrenched that most First World people don’t even see it.
Slowly, the design community begins to pay attention. Design veteran Ootje
Oxenaar spots ads by Benetton and Diesel that leverage images from Auschwitz
and sub-Saharan Africa, and concludes: “It is totally inadmissible to use the
profession like this.”

Richard Hamilton
Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes
So Different, So Appealing? U.K., 1956.

46
46
ADBUSTERS NO.27
ADBUSTERS NO.27
Chris Woods, McDonald's Nation, Canada, 1997.

For the first time in history, a small group of designers is marshalling resistance
against other designers — the ones working on the floor of the corporate image
factory. Drawing from the British satirical tradition, and the flatter tradition of
American parody, and including a dash of outright earnest moralism, they create
spoofs and takedowns. Logos and brands are the international lingua franca now,
painstakingly built with hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate money, so it’s
logos and brands that the jammers target — and détourn to their own ends. The
Golden Arches have become a more potent symbol of America than the eagle;
Chris Woods lets them speak for themselves (above).
And so the agitation continues, grows, grows more complicated. And we come
to discover, or to have it reaffirmed, that art and politics do mix. More than that:
as many of us have concluded in these most cynical of times, they must. ●

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 47
searching
>> Many designers of old — followers of
Constructivism, Bauhaus, De Stijl — believed
design could change the world. That ferocious
sense of mission was what kept their butts in the
chair at the drafting board. Now most of us laugh
at such idealism and naivety. Utopian projects
carry the unmistakable stench of dogma, tyranny
and failure about them. Today we reject manifes-
toes and grand narratives out of hand. Each in our
own way, we have decided that consumer capital-
ism has triumphed. It’s now the only game left,
the only bank that’s still paying out. To resist is
futile, even stupid, so we may as well go along for
the ride.
That’s tragic. The truth is that the grand narra-
tive is not dead. It has just changed, grown harder
to read. Advanced consumer capitalism is now
the all-embracing storyline. Its psychological
terrorism and grim ecological legacy are easily as
for new meaning
oppressive as the old narratives of Modernity,
Christianity or Communism. Now our very souls
are under seige. Spontenaity and authenticity
are threatened. The planet is dying. In choosing to
ignore or downplay these issues, designers have
struck a bargain with the status quo. We’ve
embraced the comfortable small picture while
ignoring the uncomfortable big one. Welcome to
Mephistopheles country — the grandest mind-
scape of them all.
You have a choice. You can continue knocking
about in the postmodern hall of mirrors, winning
design awards and creating warm nuclear glows
around your client’s brands. You can continue to
spend the best, most creative years of your life
massaging corporate egos and celebrating the
cause of consumer capitalism. Or, you can opt out
— come over to the other side — and join the
search for a new kind of meaning.
★
r
ne
win
Brand Design Competition
Brand Packaging – Foods
Brand Design Association,
an Affiliate of the American Institute of Graphic Arts

03
Kellogg’s Smart Start
Client: Kellogg Company
Design Firm: Duffy Design
and Interactive

“Kellogg’s wanted to introduce a

brand new adult-nutritious cereal
into a category already too
crowded with adult targeted cere-
als. While the cereal had great
nutrition numbers, there was a
bigger opportunity to make an
attitude and lifestyle promise via
the branding. The solution is a
strikingly simple package that
communicates the brand attri-
butes — health, feeling good, and
ready-to-face-the-day-energy —
in an emotive way.”
First
Things
a design manifesto

First 2000
It’s a visual world. Some of the best
minds that create it want a new world vision.
Back in 1964, a small number of British graphic design-
ers lent their names to a quietly radical document. First Things
First was a rebuke to their colleagues in the industry for having
forgotten their old idealism and lost sight of the things that
really matter. It had the force of a flash of truth, inspiring many
ad and design people, and so, by way of remembrance, we pub-
lished it again in Adbusters last year.
That fall, editor/publisher Kalle Lasn and I were visiting New
Blueprint – London,UK AIGA Journal – New York,USA
York City for a branding conference and stopped in to meet the
legendary designer Tibor Kalman. Tibor was ill with the cancer
that would, less than eight months later, claim his life, yet his
eyes were clear. He thumbed through the issue of Adbusters we
had brought for him. When he came across the manifesto he
paused and gazed out the window. Finally he turned back to us
and said, "You know, we should do this again."
So we did. Joined by design critic Rick Poynor, we re-drafted
the original manifesto, bringing the language up to date while
trying to retain the original spirit. Ken Garland, the driving
force behind the 1964 manifesto, visited the Adbusters office
from London and gave his nod to the project. With Poynor, as
well as Rudy VanderLans of Emigre magazine, we began solicit- Eye – London,UK Items – Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ing endorsements from some of the most prominent designers
around the world. Finally, Max Bruinsma, a former editor at
Eye magazine, suggested that the manifesto was bigger than a
single magazine, and should be launched simultaneously in
the design industry's most influential publications. This fall,
Adbusters, along with the six magazines shown at right, will
renew First Things First and, we hope, launch a new debate
around the flash that refuses to fade.
— Chris Dixon, Art Director, Adbusters

Form – Frankfurt, Germany Emigre – Sacramento, USA

AIGA Journal: www.aiga.org, 1-800-548-1634

Blueprint: 1-800-633-4931 +44 (0) 1171 906 2002
Emigre: www.emigre.com, 1-800-944-9021
Eye: 1-800-221-3148 +44 (0) 1858 438 872
Form: www.form.de
Items: www.bispublishers.nl

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 53
First Things First
A Brief History
by Rick Poynor
design organizations, in the words of design’s senior figures
and spokespeople (on the few occasions they have a chance to
address the public) and even in large sections of design educa-
tion, we learn about very little these days other than the
commercial uses of design. It’s rare to hear any strong point
of view expressed, by most of these sources, beyond the
unremarkable news that design really can help to make your
business more competitive. When the possibility is tentatively
raised that design might have broader purposes, potential and
meanings, designers who have grown up in a commercial cli-
mate often find this hard to believe. “We have trained a
profession,” says McCoy, “that feels political or social concerns
are either extraneous to our work or inappropriate.”
The new signatories’ enthusiastic support for Adbusters’
updated First Things First reasserts its continuing validity, and
provides a much-needed opportunity to debate these issues
before it is too late. What’s at stake in contemporary design, the
artist and critic Johanna Drucker suggests, isn’t so much the
look or form of design practice as the life and consciousness of
the designer (and everybody else, for that matter). She argues
that the process of unlocking and exposing the underlying
ideological basis of commercial culture boils down to a simple
question that we need to ask, and keep on asking: “In whose
interest and to what ends? Who gains by this construction of
reality, by this representation of this condition as ‘natural’?”
54 ADBUSTERS NO.27
This is the concern of the designer or visual communicator
in at least two senses. First, like all of us, as a member of society,
as a citizen (a word it would be good to revive), as a punch-drunk
viewer on the receiving end of the barrage of commercial imag-
es. Second, as someone whose sphere of expertise is that of
representation, of two-dimensional appearances, and the con-
struction of reality’s shifting visual surface, interface and
expression. If thinking individuals have a responsibility to with-
stand the proliferating technologies of persuasion, then the
designer, as a skilled professional manipulator of those technol-
ogies, carries a double responsibility. Even now, at this late
hour, in a culture of rampant commodification, with all its blind
spots, distortions, pressures, obsessions, and craziness, it’s
possible for visual communicators to discover alternative ways
of operating in design.
At root, it’s about democracy. The escalating commercial
take-over of everyday life makes democratic resistance more
vital than ever.
Rick Poynor is a writer on design, media and the visual arts, and
the founding editor of Eye, The International Review of Graphic
Design. His latest book, Design Without Boundaries: Visual
Communication in Transition, is a collection of his journalism
and criticism.
When Ken Garland published his First Things First
manifesto in London thirty-five years ago, he threw down a chal-
lenge to graphic designers and other visual communicators that
refuses to go away. As the century ends, this brief message,
dashed off in the heat of the moment, and signed by twenty-one
of his colleagues, is more urgent than ever; the situation it
lamented incalculably more extreme.
It is no exaggeration to say that designers are engaged in
nothing less than the manufacture of contemporary reality.
Today, we live and breathe design. Few of the experiences we
value at home, at leisure, in the city or the mall are free of its
alchemical touch. We have absorbed design so deeply into our-
selves that we no longer recognize the myriad ways in which it
The critical distinction drawn by the manifesto
was between design as communication (giving people
necessary information) and design as persuasion (trying
to get them to buy things).
prompts, cajoles, disturbs, and excites us. It’s completely natu-
ral. It’s just the way things are.
We imagine that we engage directly with the “content” of the
magazine, the TV commercial, the pasta sauce, or perfume, but
the content is always mediated by design and it’s design that
helps direct how we perceive it and how it makes us feel. The
brand-meisters and marketing gurus understand this only too
well. The product may be little different in real terms from its
rivals. What seduces us is its “image.” This image reaches us
first as a visual entity — shape, color, picture, type. But if it’s to
work its effect on us it must become an idea: NIKE! This is the
tremendous power of design.
The original First Things First was written at a time when the
British economy was booming. People of all classes were better
off than ever before and jobs were easily had. Consumer goods
such as TVs, washing machines, fridges, record players and
cars, which North Americans were the first to take for granted,
were transforming everyday life in the wealthier European
nations — and changing consumer expectations forever.
Graphic design, too, had emerged from the austerity of the
post-war years, when four-color printing was a rarity, and
designers could only dream of American clients’ lavish produc-
tion budgets and visual panache. Young designers were
vigorous and optimistic. They organized meetings, debates and
exhibitions promoting the value of design. Professional associa-
tions were started and many leading figures, still active today,
began their careers.
Ken Garland studied design at the Central School of Arts and
Crafts in London in the early 1950s, and for six years was art edi-
tor of Design magazine, official mouthpiece of the Council of
Industrial Design. In 1962, he set up his own company, Ken
Garland & Associates, and the same year began a fruitful associ-
ation (a “do-it-for-love consultancy,” as he once put it) with the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was a committed
campaigner against the bomb, and his “Aldermaston to London
Easter 62” poster, with its huge, marching CND symbol, is a
classic piece of protest graphics from the period. Always
outspoken, in person and in print, he was an active member of
the socialist Labour Party.
Garland penned his historic statement on 29 November
1963, during a crowded meeting of the Society of Industrial Art-
ists at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts. At the end he
asked the chairman whether he could read it out. “As I warmed
to the task I found I wasn’t so much reading it as declaiming it,”
he recalled later; “it had become, we all realized simultaneously,
that totally unfashionable device, a Manifesto.” There was pro-
longed applause and many people volunteered their signatures
there and then.
Four hundred copies of First Things First were published
in January 1964. Some of the other signatories were well-
established figures. Edward Wright, in his early forties, and the
oldest, taught experimental typography at the Central School;
Anthony Froshaug was also a Central typographer of great
influence. Others were teachers, students, or just starting out as
designers. Several were photographers.
The manifesto received immediate backing from an unex-
pected quarter. One of the signatories passed it to Caroline
Wedgwood Benn, wife of the Labour Member of Parliament,
Anthony Wedgwood Benn (now Tony Benn). On 24 January,
Benn reprinted the manifesto in its entirety in his weekly
Guardian newspaper column. “The responsibility for the waste
of talent which they have denounced is one we must all share,”
he wrote. “The evidence for it is all around us in the ugliness
with which we have to live. It could so easily be replaced if only
we consciously decided as a community to engage some of the
skill which now goes into the frills of an affluent society.”
That evening, as a result of the Guardian article, Garland was
invited on to a BBC TV news program to read out a section of
First Things First and discuss the manifesto. It was subsequently
reprinted in Design, the SIA Journal (which built an issue round
it), the Royal College of Art magazine, Ark, and the yearbook
Modern Publicity 1964/65, where it was also translated into
French and German. This publicity meant that many people,
not just in Britain but abroad, heard about and read First Things
First. Garland has letters in his files from designers, design
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 55
teachers and other interested parties as far afield as Australia,
the United States and the Netherlands requesting copies,
affirming support for the manifesto’s message, or inviting him
to come and speak about it.
That First Things First struck a nerve is clear. It arrived at
a moment when design was taking off as a confident,
professionalized activity. The rapid growth of the affluent con-
sumer society meant there were many opportunities for
talented visual communicators in advertising, promotion and
packaging. The advertising business itself had experienced a
The decision to concentrate efforts as a
designer on corporate projects, or advertising, or
any other kind of design, is a political choice.
so-called “creative revolution” in New York, and several influen-
tial American exponents of the new ideas-based graphic design
were working for London agencies in the early 1960s. A sense
of glamour and excitement surrounded this well-paid line of
work. From the late 1950s onwards, a few skeptical designers
began to ask publicly what this non-stop tide of froth had to do
with the wider needs and problems of society. To some, it
seemed that the awards with which their colleagues liked to flat-
ter themselves attracted and celebrated only the shallowest and
most ephemeral forms of design. For Garland and the other
concerned signatories of First Things First, design was in danger
of forgetting its responsibility to struggle for a better life for all.
The critical distinction drawn by the manifesto was between
design as communication (giving people necessary informa-
tion) and design as persuasion (trying to get them to buy
things). In the signatories’ view, a disproportionate amount of
designers’ talents and effort was being expended on advertising
trivial items, from fizzy water to slimming diets, while more
“useful and lasting” tasks took second place: street signs, books
and periodicals, catalogues, instruction manuals, educational
aids, and so on. The British designer Jock Kinneir (not a signa-
tory) agreed: “Designers oriented in this direction are
concerned less with persuasion and more with information,
less with income brackets and more with physiology, less with
taste and more with efficiency, less with fashion and more with
amenity. They are concerned in helping people to find their
way, to understand what is required of them, to grasp new pro-
cesses and to use instruments and machines more easily.”
Some dismissed the manifesto as naive, but the signatories
were absolutely correct in their assessment of the way that
design was developing. In the years that followed, similar mis-
givings were sometimes voiced by other designers, but most
preferred to keep their heads down and concentrate on ques-
tions of form and craft. Lubricated by design, the juggernaut
rolled on. In the gentler, much less invasive commercial cli-
56 ADBUSTERS NO.27
mate of the early 1960s, it was still possible to imagine that if a
few more designers would only move across to the other side of
the vehicle balance would be restored. In its wording, the mani-
festo did not acknowledge the extent to which this might, in
reality, be a political issue, and Garland himself made a point of
explaining that the underlying political and economic system
was not being called into question. “We do not advocate the abo-
lition of high pressure consumer advertising,” he wrote, “this is
not feasible.”
But the decision to concentrate one’s efforts as a designer on
corporate projects, or advertising, or any other kind of design, is
a political choice. “Design is not a neutral value-free process,”
argues the American design educator Katherine McCoy, who
contends that corporate work of even the most innocuous con-
tent is never devoid of political bias. Today, the imbalance
identified by First Things First is greater than ever. The vast
majority of design projects — and certainly the most lavishly
funded and widely disseminated — address corporate needs, a
massive over-emphasis on the commercial sector of society,
which consumes most of graphic designers’ time, skills and
creativity. As McCoy points out, this is a decisive vote for eco-
nomic considerations over other potential concerns, including
society’s social, educational, cultural, spiritual, and political
needs. In other words, it’s a political statement in support of
the status quo.
Design’s love affair with form to the exclusion of almost
everything else lies at the heart of the problem. In the 1990s,
advertisers were quick to co-opt the supposedly “radical” graph-
ic and typographic footwork of some of design’s most
celebrated and ludicrously self-regarding stars, and these
designers, seeing an opportunity to reach national and global
audiences, were only too happy to take advertising’s dollar.
Design styles lab-tested in youth magazines and obscure music
videos became the stuff of sneaker, soft drink and bank ads.
Advertising and design are closer today than at any point since
the 1960s. For many young designers emerging from design
schools in the 1990s, they now appear to be one and the same.
Obsessed with how cool an ad looks, rather than with what it is
really saying, or the meaning of the context in which it says it,
these designers seriously seem to believe that formal innova-
tions alone are somehow able to effect progressive change in
the nature and content of the message communicated. Exactly
how, no one ever manages to explain.
Meanwhile, in the sensation-hungry design press, in the
judging of design competitions, in policy statements from
first things first manifesto 2000
We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and
visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which
the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently
been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desir-
able use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors
promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and
publications reinforces it.

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill

and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds,
detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt ton-
ers, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial Jonathan Barnbrook
work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have Nick Bell
now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. Andrew Blauvelt
This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession's Hans Bockting
Irma Boom
time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville
that are inessential at best.
Max Bruinsma
Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this Siân Cook
view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to Linda van Deursen
advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, Chris Dixon
and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with William Drenttel
commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen- Gert Dumbar
Simon Esterson
consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some
Vince Frost
extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably
Ken Garland
harmful code of public discourse.
Milton Glaser
There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Jessica Helfand
Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand Steven Heller
our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing cam- Andrew Howard
paigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, televi- Tibor Kalman
Jeffery Keedy
sion programs, films, charitable causes and other information
Zuzana Licko
design projects urgently require our expertise and help.
Ellen Lupton
We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, Katherine McCoy
lasting and democratic forms of communication — a mindshift Armand Mevis
away from product marketing and toward the exploration and J. Abbott Miller
production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is Rick Poynor
shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; Lucienne Roberts
Erik Spiekermann
it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part,
Jan van Toorn
through the visual languages and resources of design.
Teal Triggs
In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our Rudy VanderLans
skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of Bob Wilkinson
global commercial culture, their message has only grown more
urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no
more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 57
agitate 2000 jonathan barnbrook
Chaotic, complex, and well-designed but often illegible, obscure, and
“unattractive,” Jonathan Barnbrook’s designs and typefaces function as
deliberate contradictions. Good and evil, beauty and ugliness coexist in his
cryptic work that mirrors the real-world hypocrisy of multinational corporations,
military jingo and First World consumerism. Barnbrook tightly matches medium
and message: his typeface Nixon is “to tell lies in,” Drone is “for text without
meaning,” and Prozac is reserved to “simplify meaning.”
“There’s a reason for the way I do things and if you look I hope you’ll get
the meaning,” says Barnbrook in Typography Now Two, “though the communica-
tion process isn’t so direct that you are necessarily going to get it the first time
you look at it.”

Jonathan Barnbrook Prototype, 1996, a typeface with a very ‘90s identity crisis.
58 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 thomas.matthews
photo: David spero

Kristine Matthews and Sophie Thomas, NO SHOP, London, 1997

Strolling in London, you chance upon an odd shop — a No Shop, in fact.

Funny, you think to yourself, I wonder what they sell? You walk in and take an
empty bag, “Shop” printed on one side, “No” on the other. You browse,
meandering between bright banners that promise “prices slashed,” “final
reductions,” “less is more,” “satisfaction guaranteed,” and finally realize that
all the shelves are empty — or rather, that the walls are lined with life-size
photocopies of empty shelves. You make your way to the cash register, scout-
ing for a salesperson, but only find a till, open and penniless. The register
pumps out a receipt telling you the total of your final purchase (zero) and
why your future purchases should tally even less.
This surreal No Shop experience was brought to you by Kristine Matthews
and Sophie Thomas, sponsored by Friends of the Earth, U.K. Just another day
of window-shopping for a new reality with England’s growing underground
of environmentalist designers.

pierre bernard >> (Following page)
Pierre Bernard, a former member of the design collective Grapus (conceived in the aftermath of the
1968 Paris street revolt), is the founding father of the Atelier de Création Graphique. Bernard and his three
ACG partners — Uli Meisenheimer, Johannes Bergerhausen and Cyril Cohen — work solely for causes they
believe in and for non-profit organizations and cultural institutions. Corporate clients are turned away
cold. “I always made it known,” Bernard told Graphis magazine, “that I resent the ideological influence of
advertising on graphic design. Graphic design’s role is not to excite economic growth.”

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 59
 &
foundations for world u n d e rs ta n d i n g
people

ADBUSTERS NO.27
60
background Photo: mary ellen mark
u n d e rs ta n d i n g

money
world
for
foundations

NO.27 Sept/OCT 99 61
NO.27
Spread for the magazine Contrast on the AUTUMN/99
theme of market 61
totalitarianism, Atelier de Création Graphique, France, 1998.
agitate 2000 james victore

Self-financing many of his polemic posters on racism, the death penalty,

the AIDS crisis, and (pictured here) the “Disneyfication” of New York City, James
Victore exemplifies the potentially explosive role graphic design could play in
challenging threats to our communities and lives. A Robin Hood of politics and
design, his posters hang in the streets to expose and condemn the power
structures that otherwise monopolize public debate.
“The public is so conditioned and so used to seeing images through com-
mon advertising that when you give them alternative messages in that medium
they’ll accept them,” Victore told Eye magazine. “I’m thoroughly interested in
using the medium of advertising to get messages across. And if that means I
should do branding or create logos, then that’s what I want to do.” ● James Victore, Just Say No, New York, 1998.

62 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 Dirty Air. Altered Foods. Misinformation. Loss of identity.

creativeve
resistance
resistance c0contest

If you’re a designer, filmmaker, ad agency team or digital artist, you have

the skills to affect the issues that concern you. Adbusters needs your
help to sell ideas, not products. Send us your best social marketing con-
cept — storyboard, video, poster, print-ad, parody, installation or
performance art piece. Create. Resist. Contest.

See www.adbusters.org/contest for details.

Submit to:
The Contest c/o Adbusters, 1243 West 7th Avenue,
Vancouver, BC, V6H 1B7, Canada.

Adbusters will award a total of two thousand dollars to winning entries.

We have extended the deadline: entries must be postmarked by December 1, 1999.
Work will be judged by the Adbusters staff and winners announced in our Spring 2000
issue. Adbusters retains the right to reproduce winning entries in our magazine,
website and in campaign materials.
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 63
64 ADBUSTERS NO.27
O n a former tobacco
plantation outside
Washington,
D.C., The Ruckus
Society cultivates
a crop of future

twr
Edward Abbeys.

the
hrow
ench!
Photography by Dang Ngo by Bruce Grierson

In the shadow of a fifty-foot climbing
tower, the campers are furiously tying knots. Their fingers are work-
ing, their tongues are out, and “butterflies” and “figure-eights” are
blooming in their short bits of rope. They keep one eye on the serene
and goateed climbing instructor, who is demonstrating how it’s done,
like a close-up-magic guy. Dan Rudie treats the act of tying a knot with
such prayerful reverence, you’d think your life depended on it —
which of course, it does. “If you want more practice, there are lots of
good books out there on knots,” he says. “Actually,” pipes up Kelly
Osbourne, another climbing instructor, “Dan’s the only guy I know
who thinks those are good books.”
Here on Glen Ora Farm, 400 acres of rolling wildgrass in the fox-
hunting country of rural Virginia, knot-tying isn’t the half of it. There
are the usual trappings of the camps you remember from childhood:
the marshmallow wars, the late-night bonfires, the anemic, Radar
O’Reilly-like bugling of morning reveille. The campers wander around
with their dinnerware sets — plastic mug, spoon and frisbee — and
the slightly crazed expressions of folks who have spent too much time
out of doors.
But this ain’t your usual summer retreat. Beneath the hippie jocu-
larity lies an urgency of purpose. This is a human rights “action” camp,
and it’s being run with the kind of Stopwatch Gang precision you
might expect from the merry band of citizen outlaws who pulled off

NO.27
NO.27SEPT/OCT
AUTUMN/99
99 65
gotcha banner hangs on Mt. Rushmore and the Sears Tower and
inside the Mall of America on the busiest shopping day of the
year; who smoked out Kathy Lee Gifford’s sweatshop-made Wal-
Mart fashion line, and trained Woody Harrelson to hang his
Hollywood butt off the Golden Gate Bridge in the defense of old-
growth trees. Even the big nylon tarp all the campers are sitting
on has a place in the social narrative. It’s actually a banner that
reads, “Stop Mitsubishi’s Rape of Mother Earth.” Four years
ago, it adorned the Union Bank of California in downtown San
Francisco.
The campers are guerrilla activism’s new shift, 100 people
eager to replace the graying eco-buccaneers who got the move-
ment this far but now couldn’t find the old fire with a smoke
detector. Assembled here from across North America, they are
key players in the grassroots human rights and environmental
communities (and anyone who has ever lobbied against, say,
Shell oil extraction in Nigeria or nuclear testing in Nevada
knows there is much overlap between the two). They have come
to share stories, contacts, bean salad. And of course, to learn
“direct action” strategies they can then take home and teach.
What we’re talking about is intensive tactical training in non-
violent
dissent. You might think of it as the mental-environ- mental
equivalent of what the FBI recruits are doing down the road in
Quantico. The San Francisco-based Ruckus Society, which cre-
ated this camp, and which employs past and present members
of such organizations as Earth First! and the Greenpeace Action
Team, promotes monkeywrenching in the most currently
understood sense of the word: not spiking trees or blowing up
dams, but rather creating obstructions to injustice, staging spec-
tacles that draw the media gaze and exploit its immense power
to shape public opinion. The words of Howard Zinn might be
their credo: “The most effective way to stop the machinery is to
throw a wrench into it. Most of us can’t afford wrenches, so we
have to use our bodies instead.”
For one hyperintensive week, the campers will learn a brain-
scrambling array of skills, from how to rappel down a
skyscraper, to how to build a high-tech blockade, to how to dress
in court for your arraignment. They will skate over the bedrock
issues an informed activist must ultimately understand: inter-
national law, geopolitics, the history of civil disobedience. They
will learn that a spent carabiner will hold up your pants. (A mul-
tilevel motive seems to drive the thorough, methodical Ruckus
training: to turn out activists who can confidently, competently
do the job—thereby boosting the credibility of a movement
whose image is sometimes tarnished by fruitcakes who throw
their own excrement at cops from tree sits, read from Dr. Seuss
in court and, when a live news microphone is shoved in their
face, can’t make a grammatical sentence.) By the end of the
week, everyone will be able to teach Burson Marstellar a thing or
two about spin, about creating a message so tight and juicy it will
“withstand the filter” of the mainstream media and take root in
the minds of viewers in more or less its original form. Ruckus is
an image factory no less potent (though several degrees of mag-
nitude smaller) than Nike. Figuratively speaking, it’s the
rainbow-haired Christian who buys the seat behind the players
bench and, the moment the camera fixes on him, holds up his
66 ADBUSTERS NO.27
sign—John: 3:16. For God so loved the world, he sent down a team of
shit-disturbers to wreak righteous havoc. For this, there is no short-
age of demand.
“When you become an ‘action wonk,’” says Ruckus director
John Sellers, “you can’t pick up a newspaper without seeing big,
fat targets that just need to be spanked.”
“What was it Pete Seeger said: ‘If I had a chance of
controlling a country’s laws or its songs, I’d take the songs’?”
Pete Tridish, one of the 100-odd Ruckus campers, is walking to
a workshop. He has a crow’s-nest beard and thick-framed glass-
es, and you half-expect his T-shirt to read, “Save your
Confederate Dollars, The South will Rise Again.” Once a squat-
ter in New York, he now lives in Philadelphia where he operates
a pirate radio station from a rig no bigger than a toaster. “I see
[pirate radio] as an organizing tool in the fight against concentra-
tion of media,” Tridish says. “I’ve come to think of it in the same
way I think of Gandhi making salt. He may not have filled out all
the forms, but then, there are some things you just ought to be
able to do. I’m doing something everybody should be able to do if
the licensing were more fairly regulated.”
What’s interesting about a Ruckus camp is that a guy like
Tridish, who’d never be allowed near the grown-ups’ table in any
mainstream function, is perfectly at home here. Every camper is
committed to his or her cause, no matter how familiar (abolish
nuclear reactors) or arcane (change the name of the Washington
Redskins). There’s Joshua Cooper, who teaches Peace Studies at
the University of Hawaii, organized the largest march in Hawaii
since the Vietnam War and still lives with his mom (and grand-
mom). When the job is thrust upon him, he will be the most
laid-back governor the state has ever had. There’s Abe Bonowitz,
a big guy from Cleveland whose T-shirt reads “Fry Fish, Not
People.” Bonowitz once tried to defend the death penalty at an
Amnesty International meeting, failed to convince even him-
self, and has since devoted his life to campaigning against it.
There are refugees from Greenpeace and illegal aliens lying low
in the States, gathering protest strategies for their families and
friends back home. Only one guy makes what might charitably
be called a comfortable living. He walks dogs in Manhattan.
Defiance as a lifestyle is the common thread. The American
Way holds no truck for these people, because the American Way
took a wrong turn somewhere around Orlando. And the usual
channels of polite dissent are failing. “To survive as an activist,
unpaid, you really have to be an iconoclast,” says Sarah Seeds, a
long-time activist here to run the nonviolence workshop. “You
cannot adopt somebody else’s priorities. You’ve got to make it
on your own.” The Ruckus Society’s great challenge is to focus
the rebel impulses of people idealistic enough to believe that cor-
porate foes more powerful than countries can be brought to heel
(or at least correctively shocked) by a bunch of individual citi-
zens with spray paint, cream pies or whatever other tools they
can scavenge from the meme warfare chest. For many, this is
less a path of choice than of compulsion. At some point, the cog-
nitive dissonance between what they believed and how they
were acting (or failing to act) became too great to bear. Next
thing they knew, they were stepping forward with a placard or
handcuffing themselves to a concrete-filled barrel.
For one intensive week, the campers will be taught a
mindscrambling array of skills, from how to rappel down a skyscrap-
er, to how to build a high-tech blockade, to how to
dress in court for your arraignment.

Under the burning afternoon sun, the group undertakes a

mock action to protest the tactics of a fictitious company
called American Seafood Products, which has been overfish-
ing the waters of a South Pacific Island nation. It’s a big,
multiphase undertaking, and the campers split into three
groups to pull it off. Everyone takes a role. (The leaders play
security guards, media, and cops.) The first group deploys a
banner at corporate headquarters; the second group block-
ades the road at the fish plant; the third group disrupts a
shareholders’ meeting at ASP headquarters in Pensacola.
Afterwards, campers and leaders debrief. The most com-
mon mistake campers made was losing composure. They
broke more laws than they needed to. Some misrepresented
themselves, outright lied, even resorted to violence. One pro-
tester who antagonized a cop is chewed out.
“You should be concerned that your behavior might have
endangered the whole action,” he is told. His face falls.
“Well, in the past, when I’ve had a cop tackling me . . . ”
“Listen. If a cop is tackling you, you’re doing something
wrong.”
Nonviolence — the strategic value of it, the moral high
ground it represents — runs thematically through every part
of this camp. Much effort is made to give Ruckus-style direct
action a historical context by placing it in a continuum of
powerful nonviolent dissent. This kind of thing has, after all,
been going on since Christ overturned the gambling tables.
Its blood runs through the Boston Tea Party, the King-led
civil rights walk from Selma to Montgomery, the Cesar
Chavez-led United Farm Workers marches. “Rule number
one is: Nobody gets hurt. Not even yourself,” said Edward
Abbey’s fictional physician Doc Sarvic in Hayduke Lives. This
is the ethic of the modern eco-warrior.
Of course, no two activists define nonviolence precisely
the same way, and over the course of the camp, there will be
plenty of discussion of its shadings. “Most people who do
direct actions know you have to start with the lobbying, the
legislation, the negotiation,” says Sarah Seeds. “If you can
effect social change through the existing systems, you may
be able to get your problem solved without going to jail, without about a fine or a couple of days in prison. You’re talking about
getting hurt, without disrupting communities.” life — or maybe an execution.”
That doesn’t always work out. Tong Yi, a Ruckus camper this Tibetan Buddhist dissent is legendarily nonviolent. But the
week, tried nonviolent dissent in Beijing. She led some student Buddhist monks who famously set themselves on fire in protest
protests in the charged days before the Tiananmen Square mas- of the Vietnam War raised a lot of questions. Is violence to your-
sacre, and later became personal translator for the dissident Wei self okay? What about violence to head off greater violence? Is
Jingshen. For her efforts, she was sentenced to two-and-a-half property damage ever defensible? Many remember the so-called
years making batteries in a Chinese labour camp. Thupten “ecological lone ranger” who fought corporate crime in Chicago
Tsening, an activist and filmmaker now based in New York City, in the ‘70s, and once redirected poisonous chemical waste from
saw the limits of nonviolent protest in his home country of the stream where it was heading and into the office of the com-
Tibet. “You put up even a small poster and you’re not talking pany’s chairman. Were his tactics immoral? “No more so,” he

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 67
 ple of days later we occupied the
barge that was leaving the plant
with sludge. Then a couple of
days later we suspended 13
climbers off the Triborough
Bridge and wouldn’t let the
barge go through. With each
event, the media attention
grew. Only a couple of days
after that last action, the gover-
nors of New Jersey and New
York announced an agreement
to stop sludge dumping.”
Bruno is willing to take some
credit for that, but not all. “The
issue was already out there. We
just raised the volume of the

hanging
in the Virginia air, along with the climbers, is the
tantalizing possibility that one day this is simply
the way most people will live.
said, “than if I stopped a man from beating a dog or strangling a
woman.”
At a massive anti-logging blockade in Idaho, in which activ-
ists in high, precarious tripods were chained together before a
sign that read, “Move one and they all fall,” a couple of cops took
Sarah Seeds aside. “How can you do this and tell me you’re non-
violent?” they asked. The not-quite-satisfactory answer, of
course, is, “We didn’t ask you to move us — that’s a choice you
made.”
The campers will munch on the philosophy all week. Nothing
will be resolved. “Nobody gets hurt and nothing gets damaged”
will emerge not so much as a strict code but a broad aim —
depending on the degree of threat and allowing for the
imperfection of the human beings on both sides. It’s true that if
you think about any issue long enough, you can always find rea-
sons not to undertake any direct action at all. Things are always a Then “their moments” become “our moments.” Détourning the
little greyer than you thought. If you go ahead, some good people
will probably be unjustly tarred. And you may end up pissing off
the public more than you inspire them. Just before launching a
major action, with the team gathered before him, Sellers always
asks for a “gut-check”: anyone whose heart isn’t entirely in it
should step back right now, no questions asked. Direct action is
ultimately an act of faith. In sometimes ambiguous seas, you
must commit to your position and drop anchor.
Kenny Bruno, head of Earth Rights International,
sits on the grass by the lunch tent recalling the most satisfying
action he was ever involved in — actually a series of actions
against ocean sewage dumping in New York City in 1988. “The
first day we gathered 500 boats and we did a flotilla. Then a cou- even prompt a reporter’s call-back anymore. In an MTV-juiced
debate. It was time for people to
say, No more. No more discus-
sion, no more resolutions, no
more delays.”
There’s a point in every social
revolution, after the clouds have
been seeded by growing public
unrest, and the voices of the
grassroots lobbyists are begin-
ning to be heard, when the
status quo is suddenly, briefly
vulnerable. Greenpeace veteran Nadine Bloch calls it the
“instant of alternative possibility.” This is the time for the action
team to strike.
In 1995, Sellers and fellow Greenpeacers cut some illegal
French driftnets in the Atlantic. A special U.N. meeting on drift-
net fishing was underway at the time. France and Germany were
sharing the presidency of the European Union, and France was
pushing Germany to increase the length of driftnets from 2.5 to
five kilometers. “It was the perfect opportunity to say, ‘Look, you
want to change the rules, but no one’s policing the rules that we
do have.’ It was up to us to say, ‘This is outrageous.’” In the end,
the UN voted to restrict driftnets to 2.5 kilometers.
At any given instant, one individual or group owns “the politi-
cal moment,” Sellers believes. But that moment can be hijacked.
moment may mean exploiting the anniversaries of environmen-
tal disasters, or the birthdays of human rights leaders, or the
anniversary of the death of a leader. Anything to reverse the
polarity of power.
A lot of “political moments” seem eminently détournable
these days. The buttocks of many of the fat, spankable targets
Sellers et al. have their eye on — from the World Bank to the bio-
tech industry — have never been more exposed. At the same
time, events like the ouster of Suharto and the conviction of
Pinochet prove that the unlikely can happen. The mighty can
fall. It’s a fine time to be in the direct action business.
But it’s also a time when, as never before, activism needs
inspiration. The tactics that once grabbed media attention don’t

68 ADBUSTERS NO.27
world, the slogans of activists are in danger of becoming just
more visual noise on the landscape. Banners are getting old.
“You definitely have to use banners wisely,” Sellers admits. “I
think there’s still a place for them if they’re funny and they reso-
nate. A banner is still an incredibly confrontational thing to
hang in the Mall of America, the temple of consumption. But I
don’t want to be ‘Banners R Us.’ I want to do more political the-
ater. I want to do vertical dance. I want to do great blockades that
use fun contraptions.”
Contraptions like the “pipeline,” made of a nylon skin
stretched over a frame, that Sellers and a few fellow Ruckus
trainers deployed at the corporate headquarters of Occidental
Petroleum in L.A. They got it into the building by distracting the
security guards with a woman posing as a befuddled tourist. The
pipe was 30 feet long, with an internal light and ventilation sys-
tem and a radio link to a co-ordinator outside. It wormed
through the hallways and disgorged fake blood down the stairs.
Six activists were taken away in cuffs.
Which isn’t the point of these exercises, necessarily.
”To me, it’s not so much about, ‘Did you get arrested?’ It’s,
‘What kind of confrontation did you create?’” says Sellers. The
principles of direct action are pretty much the same as the prin-
ciples of good theater: exploit the tension of the power
imbalance, ratchet up the conflict and build toward an inevita-
ble, cathartic showdown.
Filmmaker Michael Moore (Roger and Me, TV Nation, The
Awful Truth) has proven a genius at this. You discover that peo-
ple are being woken up at five a.m. by garbage trucks in their
neighborhood? Then hire a garbage truck, drive it to the home of
the CEO of the garbage-disposal company and knock cans
around. You find out that sodomy is still illegal in some states
(an application of the “lock up the fags” school of jurispru-
dence)? Then drive a big pink coach marked “sodomy bus”
through the leafy streets of those states.
The hitch, of course, is that you need your own show. Most
activists have to settle for catching the eye of the evening news
programs, by coming up with an action that’s sufficiently novel.
It may mean staging a “tumor derby” fishing contest near the
outflow spigot of a notoriously polluting pulp mill. The first fish-
erman to find a healthy fish wins. (When Greenpeace did this on
the Puyallup River in Washington, the story went around the
world.) Call it “satirical activism.”
It may mean exploiting the intercom code used to page
employees in the department store you’re trying to jam. On a
predetermined day this March, activists from the Rainforest
Action Network (RAN) sauntered into dozens of Home Depot
stores, surreptitiously picked up a house phone and announced,
“Attention shoppers, old-growth wood on sale in aisle four.” Call
it “intercom activism.”
It may mean distributing T-shirts to the homeless. Abe
Bonowitz finds this works out just fine. The street folks get a
clean shirt, and he gets a fleet of walking billboards (“I Oppose
the Death Penalty — Don’t Kill for Me,” plus the telephone
number of his organization). Call it “direct-marketing activism.”
RAN recently employed a tactic known as “ethical shoplift-
ing.” In Atlanta, several members of the local Indian band
walked into the store and brazenly walked out — or tried to —
with lumber. They made a polite show of forgiving the store for
having taken it from them , since the trees had come from what
was technically their land. Transforming the shopliftee into the
shoplifter was a neat détournement that captured the local media.
(RAN has actually purchased some lumber beforehand, so the
natives could be seen to be carrying it away and taking it back
home. The optics said: the Indians win.)
And so it goes — potent actions turning on a single, simple
idea. At public meetings of the Environmental Protection Agen-
cy, activists have smuggled in laugh boxes or “talking briefcases”
(briefcases with tape recorders inside them). “When some-
body’s really fucking up, you deploy one,” says Sellers. “When
they find it, you deploy another.” Some simple actions work
because they speak to the power brokers in their own language.
ACT UP, the gay rights group, pioneered the use of “queer dol-
lars” stamps: You stamp it on your currency before you spend it
so that the business community will know how much money
gays are sinking into the local economy.
Nadine Bloch is routinely surprised about how little it takes to
get the corporate goat. “We go up with a stupid puppet in front of
a corporation, and they react by smashing us and having us
arrested,” she says. “They’re threatened by this little bit of spit
and string.”
For the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square, Sellers
wanted to build a tank and drive it through the Washington
streets, but he couldn’t get the Free Tibet folks to come on board.
“It would have been so much fun to swivel that turret and point
that gun right at the Chinese ambassador’s office window and
shoot a bunch of flowers at him or something.” The very idea of
it is making Sellers wistful; he seems to be mentally putting
“tank” back into the “active file.” “Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s
might want a tank because of all the disarmament stuff that he’s
doing. To take a tank to a weapons show or something would be
fun. But the 10th anniversary of Tiananmen Square — that was
the day to have the tank.”
By the end of the week, the climbers are gliding up and
down the ropes, as if the climbing tower were the Exxon head-
quarters and they aim to pop through the window of a top
executive and rearrange his furniture (or something equally
dire). Larry Egbert, the camp doctor, who struggled on the ropes
early on, found a new harness and is now climbing like a veteran
second-story man. Josh Cooper prussiks to the top to check his
anchor. In his mind, he’s scaling the smokestack of a pineapple
plant on Oahu. Everyone is figuring out ways to apply what
they’ve learned here. It becomes clear that what Ruckus is, more
than anything, is a community, a vast open-source software pro-
gram with everyone debugging a line or two of code, and
everyone benefiting from the groupthink.
Yesterday, People magazine telephoned Sellers. They want to
do a story on Ruckus. Hanging here in the Virginia air, along
with the climbers, is the tantalizing possibility that one day Peo-
ple magazine won’t be interested in Ruckus, because a gathering
like this won’t be news. A boot camp to train activists won’t be
necessary. This is simply the way most people will live, sponta-
neously engaging in little acts of necessary subterfuge, following
a set of moral laws that the written laws of the nation may not yet
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 69
“Even
if we’re getting our asses kicked, always remember — and
this is important — we’re having more fun than they are.”
—John Sellers
have caught up with. Doing the things sovereign
citizens just ought to be able to do.
“If we could raise the level of activism of everybody in North
America by three percent, we’d be fine,” says Mark Floegel, a
Vermont-based freelance activist here at camp to lead a media
workshop. “If we could get the people who now do nothing to
stop and think before they buy, or drive a bit more conservatively
to save gas, or to write one letter to the editor a year; and then get
the people who already write one letter to the editor a year to give
twenty bucks to [an activist organization], we’d be fine. I don’t
think it takes a lot of people to get the government to sit up and
take notice. Politicians are not going to move until there’s a level
of activism out there to press them. The US didn’t move on
South Africa until a threshold [of dissent] was reached, and peo-
ple were cranked up about it.”
As night falls, a “globalization” workshop is convened on the
lawn. The moon is full. Fireflies blink out their green code. The
subject of the upcoming World Trade Organization conference
in Seattle is raised. As it happens, Ruckus will be holding a camp
there in September to prepare activists to jam the event.
“It should be pretty interesting,” says Kelly Quirk, director of
RAN, who with his mop of hair and mossy beard looks like a
‘70s soul-rocker. “Some of my friends are coming up from San
Francisco. And some of the APEC protesters are coming down
from Vancouver. I’ve been telling people, ‘Let’s all go to Seattle
and have a riot.’ Remember when [playwright] Larry Kramer
said Act Up was going to have a riot in San Francisco? In the end
there was no riot, but it got everybody wondering and talking.
‘Did you hear there’s gonna be a riot? Who’s gonna riot? Are you
70 ADBUSTERS NO.27
gonna riot?’ Well, here’s what’s going to
happen if we don’t at least go to Seattle with
that intention: The ministers are all going to
be inside the conference center and the
greenies and the tree-huggers are going to
be outside with their leaflets and their CDs,
and the media are going to be standing
around, and everyone is going to be playing
their old roles. So what we need to do is
decide that, this time, they don’t get to have
their meeting. We don’t let it happen.”
Quirk paints the picture of a massive co-
ordinated protest effort, with blockades and
pirate-radio support and activists dogging
ministers all over town. Afterwards, a camp-
er comes up to Sellers, jazzed. “I’m getting
real interested in this Seattle action,” she
says.
“Well, you might not want to book a room
just yet,” says Sellers, “cause we’re thinking
about pushing for a general strike.”
With 20 arrests on his sheet, Sellers may have to assume a
more supporting role in Seattle than he has in the past. He’s a
couple of felonies away from fouling out of the game. So maybe
instead of being the guy to actually, say, fit a “WTO Rough
Trade” studded collar around the neck of the Space Needle, he’ll
be on the ground with a radio. But he’s not about to duck for
cover. If he’s arrested, he’ll give his real name.
“I want to be as public with this kind of work as I can be,” he
says. “I want to say, ‘My name is John Sellers, I grew up in Phoe-
nixville, Pennsylvania, I have a mom and dad who love me. And
I’m in jail because I’m a person of conscience.’ I want to make
the guards, and the police, and everyone else think, ‘What is this
good person doing on the wrong side of the law? Isn’t it strange
that someone like this should be spending so much time in pris-
on? That’s not right.’” If a political candidate said it, you’d roll
your eyes. But there’s no doubting Sellers’ sincerity. And on the
last day of camp, after the group has arranged itself into a circle
— each camper summing up their feelings in a sound bite — he
is, fittingly, the last person to speak. He goes a little over his allot-
ted 10 seconds. ”I just want to say, it’s been an honor. I’m
humbled by you people. You’ve strengthened my resolve to
fight. Thank you all very, very much for coming.” A silent
moment passes. “And now,” he says, uncorking the eve-of-battle
voice of Henry the Fifth, if Henry the Fifth were a bald American
hippie: “Let’s party like gnats on an open wound!"
Bruce Grierson is a Vancouver writer who, despite spending seven
days at the Ruckus camp at Glen Ora, still can’t tie a butterfly knot.
MARK KINGWELL
Just War: A Five-Point Non-Plan
1. Prologue:The Forgotten War
The forgotten war was never fought, except in the imagina-
tion. It pitted the mighty arsenal of the United States against
the mighty arsenal of the Soviet Union, and it resulted in a
nuclear conflagration that melted cities into glass-and-metal
puddles and flash-vaporized all human flesh into blasted out-
lines of dust. Those who didn’t die instantly died later, slowly
wasting away, hair falling out, limbs rotting. Eventually every-
body was dead.
I was obsessed with this war for most of young adulthood,
as were most of the people I knew. This fact is forgotten now,
too. In the early 1980s we all obsessed about this war that
never happened. We actually thought we might die in it. Some
of us were literally sick with anxiety. Many of us made plans
for where to meet when the sirens began to wail. Most of us
signed petitions, marched in demonstrations, painted human
outlines on buildings, or flopped to the concrete in die-ins. I
wrote a long master’s thesis on war and justice. It is hard to
imagine all this now.
2. Just War:Theory and Practice
The theory of the just war was worked out by Christian jurists
of the Renaissance and early-modern period. They wanted
rules that would distinguish wars conducted according to
God’s will, in the service of natural law, from those conducted
by renegades and criminals. They assumed that war was inevi-
table in human affairs, and accepting this fact meant
committing to rules of judgment about it. In his hugely influ-
ential work De Jura Belli et Pacis (“On the Rules of War and
Peace,” 1625), the Dutch lawyer and theologian Hugo Grotius
laid down the basic tenets of a just war.
There must be jus ad bellum: that is, just cause for going to
war. There must also be jus in bello: that is, justice in the con-
duct of the war. Just causes, according to natural law, include
protecting legitimate property, protecting the weak from the
strong, recognizing sovereign borders, and securing the life
and liberty of peoples. All diplomatic means of resolution
must have been tried and exhausted. Just conduct of war
includes accepting the principles of discrimination and pro-
portion. It is not just to kill civilians. It is not just to use
excessive force. Genocide and torture, looting and pillaging,
are not acceptable. Prisoners are to be treated humanely.
Respect is due to the dead.
These rules provide the only code of conduct, in interna-
tional law, for an extreme human activity that, in the centuries
since Grotius, has shown no signs of diminishing. Just-war
theory tries to limit what it cannot eliminate. And without the
theory, there is no Treaty of Westphalia, no Geneva Conven-
tion, no Nuremberg trials, no United Nations, no
International Criminal Court in The Hague. No such thing, in
law anyway, as a crime against humanity.
3. A Problem, and Another, Bigger Problem
In practice, of course, the rules of just war have been honored
more in the breach than in the observance. Like all justifica-
tions, the theory is open to cynical use. “National interest,”
even “humanitarian aid,” cover a multitude of sins, from para-
noia about an alien form of political-theoretical organization
(see Vietnam) to fears that oil prices may rise beyond consum-
er comfort levels (see the Persian Gulf). A few threatened
nationals, however complicit, are usually on the ground to
provide the photo-ops needed, back home, to make the war
look justifiable (see Grenada).
Americans think of the Second World War, where (accord-
ing to the received wisdom) justice was served because the
Nazis were evil, and long for simpler days. The writer Studs
Terkel got it right: his book about the conflict is called The
Good War. Since then, like a comic-book hero on the prowl in
a troubled landscape, America has been seeking just cause to
flex its muscles. Patriotism comes into play, protesters are
marginalized, and bumper stickers featuring flags and slo-
gans (“These colors don’t run!”) are everywhere visible. At
last! A war we can be proud of! But all the superhero really gets
are nasty regional entanglements, slippery guerrillas, dishon-
est terrorists, ethnic cleansers and unreasonable zealots.
The unfought war between the United States and the Soviet
Union made the deeper point. At a certain level of destructive-
ness or complexity, the idea of a just war is meaningless, even
obscene. In the spectre of species-death, of mutual assured
destruction, even to speak of going justly to war is the act of a
lunatic. And at the big end, so at the small. Wars, when they
happen now, do not threaten global destruction, but they are
NO.27 AUTUMN/99 71
equally resistant to the good-guy categories of the just-war
tradition.
Not because that tradition is meaningless but because
it is too simplistic to account for the irrational, the tragic, the
inhuman elements of human behavior. Who is victim and
who is aggressor? Whose rights to self-determination are to
be respected? When there is no standing army of clear mili-
tary presence, legitimate targets are hard to figure. A radio
station (and its unfortunate employees) may come under the
smart bomb’s targeting intelligence as much as a bridge or
a battalion.
Sell arms to Saddam Hussein or liberate Kuwait? Stabilize
the Balkans or punish Milosevic for his bloody racist agenda?
No war, however small in scale, is small enough in complexity
to fit into the categories we have. Pursuing one value, we com-
promise another. Judging one way, we enact a complicity with
murder seen another way. In the end, it is just war.
4. The Already-Thought
This situation is intolerable to those who would explain the
world to us. We know this from watching how they have react-
ed to the latest unjust war to pass across the mediascape. The
talk shows and newspaper columns ranged themselves up on
either side of a line that nobody really could claim, in good
intellectual conscience, to understand. They wanted to judge
because we all wanted to judge, because the sight of all that
human suffering was something we thought should not
pass without judgment.
But however well presented, however commanding of
momentary assent, the judgments all seemed to lack sub-
stance. Milosevic is a murderer who must be stopped: Yes. Yet
the United States (which we chose to designate ‘NATO’ for
convenience) has no business policing the region: Perhaps.
The Kosovo Liberation Army has a legitimate claim against
the genocidal Serbs: Certainly. So Madeleine Albright acted
with admirable forthrightness in agreeing to support them:
Yes. But Madeleine Albright allowed herself to become
embroiled with people who don’t give a damn about American
self-image, or playing fair: Yes. So the war was bungled,
nasty, inconclusive, and shameful, and its aftermath could
be worse: Yes.
I kept trying, as I imagine many people did, to forge convic-
tion from these slippery materials. Writers I admire — Noam
Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, Susan Sontag — weighed in on
different sides. Dinner conversations were heated and confus-
ing. Emotions ran high. It seemed wrong to have no fixed
opinion on the war, but somehow more deeply wrong to have
one. Columnists and panelists could not avoid the choice, and
so they chose, flattening the discourse, as they usually do, into
the polished phrases of expertise. Doubts were eliminated,
cracks in the thinking quickly papered over. It was a pure exer-
cise in what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls “the
already-thought,” journalism’s stock-in-trade. In this world,
72 ADBUSTERS NO.27
Like a comic book hero on the
prowl, America has been seeking
just cause to flex its muscles
there are no problems that cannot be solved, because whatev-
er cannot be phrased as a solvable problem is simply ignored, is
literally unthinkable.
Some even drew up handy laundry lists of opposition, in
tones so denunciatory they approached self-parody. The
right-wing liberal Andrew Coyne, in The National Post, spoke
out against a nameless army of war critics, Milosevic’s “unwit-
ting dupes in the West, that fantastic armada of left-wing
pacifists and right-wing isolationists, Pearsonian legalists
and Bismarckian realists, retired generals and decommis-
sioned diplomats and tenured professors of every description,
who have spent the past ten weeks denouncing the war as
unjust, futile and worse.”
People sometimes say, at a juncture like this, I wish I had
his conviction. But I don’t, and the structure of work and
thought that demand such conviction on a daily basis are the
invisible dimension of this evil episode. It was, in addition
to everything else, a triumph for the most common and most
unremarked of crimes against humanity: unjustified know-
ingness, cheap certainty.
5. Epilogue:Tragedy
Knowingness is the enemy of thought. The culture at large,
not just the print and television journalism that are its most
prominent features, is driven by knowingness, by the heady
imperatives of the already-thought. We see this clearly only in
a moment of crisis, when something occurs that does not fit
the existing categories and, in spilling out from them, shows
their limits. The mounting vehemence, bordering on
derangement, which afflicts the professional knowers at such
moments is our first and most important clue that we are in
the presence of something unthinkable.
War is unthinkable not because we cannot talk about it, but
because we talk about it too much; because we think we can
tame its fundamental irrationality by bringing it inside the
legal and moral categories of rationality. Tragedy, as Sopho-
cles and his audiences knew, consists in the spectacle of
unacknowledged limits, of fates realized in the very act of try-
ing to escape them. In thinking we understand this war well
enough to pass judgment on it, we only double the load of
tragedy, adding a second hubris of knowingness to the first of
violence. We cannot know in advance what the price of that
second act of arrogance will be; we can only know that, like
this war itself, it will be terrible.
Mark Kingwell teaches philosophy at the University of Toronto. His
new book is called Marginalia: A Cultural Reader (Penguin).
 NEWS FROM THE FRONT

carnival against capitalism

Photographs by Nick Cobbing by John Barker

London, June 18, 1999. What a day, a day to lift the

spirits after weeks stuck between a rock and a hard place and of terri-
ble arguments with old comrades over the madness of Kosovo. Finally
it is J18, our chance to come together, our chance not to play the
passive spectator, but to join in a world day of action against global
capitalism and its inhumanity.
The sun is shining and hot even as I listen to the morning radio
reports: climbers have rappelled down the Tower Bridge, closing it
with a low-slung banner; police, descending on ropes of their own, are
trying to take it down. Of its own accord, London’s underfunded
underground train system is breaking down. Cyclists out in force are
closing off streets around Blackfriars. Marchers have shut down the
Bank of England; a ring of people surround the Treasury.
This is coordinated decentralization, and the cops don’t know how
to deal with it. They’re used to control — all those easy years escorting
leftist marches to Trafalgar Square, always at a pace that made your
feet hurt. Today’s protests have the police — and traffic news radio —
working overtime.
It is not yet 12 o’clock, the moment that the Carnival of Resistance
(a.k.a. the Carnival of the Dispossessed) is set to begin, and already I
feel a building sense of continuity. On Election Day, 1970, I joined

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 73
 NF
over 500 others behind pounding drummers for my first
march through the City of London. It was called the Festival of
the Oppressed.
This time the Carnival kicks off in Liverpool Street station
and the drums are loud and thrilling on the stone floor. It’s as
though the huge concourse, designed for the discomfort of
travellers, has just been waiting all these years for a rave. Here
it is, and we snake out with the drums to a dead plaza with a
McDonald’s and a brazen office block of the Thatcher era. The
pounding rages on as mountaineers climb up the office block
to dance on the parapet. Beyond our wild cheering, the office
security stares out the windows — today, they are the passive
spectators of what is normally their undisputed territory.
I dash back to the station to meet a pal. She just makes it,
one of the very last out of the London Underground before it
closes under the weight of its own failures. She finds me read-
ing Evading Standards, the great spoof of the Evening Standard
newspaper being handed out by a team of culture jammers. We
return to the Carnival and fold into the momentum of the
drumming. Someone gives us green masks, another product
of the Gift Economy of selfless and anonymous work that is
making all this happen. Around us, others swirl past in masks
of red or gold. I turn my mask over and find a suggestion
inside: “On the signal follow your color. Let the Carnival
begin.” There is also a declaration: “Those in authority fear the
74 ADBUSTERS NO.27
mask, for their power partly resides in identifying, stamping,
cataloguing — in knowing who you are. The wearing of a mask
symbolizes the rejection of the cult of personality so crucial to
consumer capitalism. While the elite gangs of state and capital
become evermore faceless their fear of the faces of everyday
resistance grows.”
So we are with the Greens and as our moment strikes a
thousand of us break away from the crowd. We have no leader,
but messages pass through our number in a spirit of trust.
This is a Magical Mystery Tour to be enjoyed.
We pour through the streets, our whistles and drums invit-
ing those in the offices to join us. At Aldgate East station, the
few cops let us stream through. The word is out to hop a west-
bound train, but the first train doesn’t stop, nor the second. As
a third train full of blank-faced passengers rushes by, the
Green trust is suddenly shaken. Feels like a trap down in the
tube, but we make it back to the street and turn again towards
the heart of the city, completely taking over the street. Traffic
halts. Tourists wave from sightseeing buses. Security guys
stand in bank doorways. So many faces from so many win-
dows. One angry guy wants to smash our faces in — but “there
are too many of you.”
Precisely.
Up around Fenchurch Street, and then suddenly we are all
re-united, masks of all colors right in the belly of the urban
 Now the cops show themselves. they’re hot,
they’ve been given the runaround, have never
beast — the LIFFE building, where comput- dealt with the fast-moving fearlessness of
er keyboards send billions of dollars this new generation of anti-capitalists
whizzing round the globe 24 hours a day. A
cobbled street running along the building
and down to the Thames River has been
blocked off and a hydrant opened to free a 40-foot waterspout. have called the New Enclosures: private capital’s takeover of
The drums beat out against the alien buildings, we’re dancing the river, of public space, of the city itself. We are not, then, “a
and singing in the rain, and under the cover of the sound and mindless mob,” but an international force against finance
fury anonymous hands brick up some LIFFE entrances and fetish and global enclosure for profit.
smash others. We block up the drains, flood Dowgate Hill and We take a break for a drink and return to a changed mood.
take a rest among other joyous faces on a tiny bit of beach on News spreads quickly: a young woman has been run over by a
the Thames, the Thames that is everywhere enclosed by private police van; some fearless youth have stormed the LIFFE build-
capital. We sit there in the sun and smoke a spliff. ing. Now the cops show themselves. They are hot, they have
been given the runaround, they have their new telescoping
The huge LIFFE building bridges Cannon Street, and by the batons, their shields and all-in-one helmets. But they have
time we return, so does a giant banner: “The Earth: A Common never dealt with the fast-moving fearlessness of the generation
Treasury For All.” This is Precise Protest — protest where it who are the children of us middle-aged “anti-capitalists.”
matters. Musicians have taken over an underground car park; And then they are on the charge. Adrenaline jacks up. Bot-
the drums beat on. More banners are hoisted, some tied to the tles begin to fly into the faces of the police. Protesters dressed
street security cameras that keep a constant vigil. I talk to a vet- in suits of irony pull flare canisters from their suitcases and
eran of London’s Stop the City protests of 1983. They said hurl them. A luxury Mercedes showroom is trashed and anoth-
resistance politics was dead, he tells me, and then we were only er bank attacked as the police charge is held off.
5,000. Now we are a Carnival of 15,000 or more. There are no Me, I’m too old for this. I don’t have the nerves or the stami-
speeches, none of the usual Bolshevik-sect newspapers, no na. But never would I say that the Carnival was somehow
leaders or superstars but everywhere an attack on what some ruined by this violence fired up by police attacks, which is

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 75
 NF

exactly what the Lord Mayor of London is saying just a couple

of hours later.

The words on my mask seem prophetic. It is the day after the

Carnival, and the radio reports have a much different tone.
Fourteen people have been arrested. The police say they will
immediately begin studying hundreds of hours of street secu-
rity camera footage to add to that number. Some three months
ago, I picked up the newspaper and read how keen the cops
were to infiltrate Reclaim the Streets and other groups organiz-
ing J18 in London. Now they have just 14 arrests to show for
their efforts, and there will be debriefing sessions called, new
containment plans drafted. Of this you can be sure: they will
secure their enclosures. And as J18 in London showed, a gener-
ation of young people will once again prove ready to break
down their every barrier.

— John Barker was born in North London in 1948 and still lives
there. His stories of prison and London life have appeared in various
UK anthologies and magazines. His novel Futures is being published
in French by Grasset and in German by Dumont this year.

Environmental Systems Failure

The Widening Prosperity Gap
Corporations Rising Above the Law
CULTURE JAMMERS LISTEN UP!
This Nov. 27 to Dec. 3, unelected officials at the Third Ministerial Conference of the
World Trade Organization will decide the fate of these millennial concerns. Seattle
will be the rallying point for an all-out mobilization of activists and thinkers from around
the world. In lecture halls and on the streets, through strategic actions and by our sheer
numbers, we will make it clear to the WTO that we don’t like the way they do the world’s business.

Going to Seattle? Contact the People for Fair Trade WTO Host Committee:
1-877-STOP-WTO; info@peopleforfairtrade.org

Attend the International Forum on Globalization Teach-In at the Belaroya

Seattle Symphony Hall, Saturday, Nov. 27: www.ifg.org; (415) 771-3394

Ready for direct action? Call the Ruckus Group about their September 16-28,
Globalize This! Action Camp: www.ruckus.org; (510) 848-9565

www.adbusters.org

76 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 Damn it! I should have asked
him The Big Question.
photo: Reuters – Jeff mitchell – Archive photos

www.adbusters.org/campaigns/economic

TV Mind Bombs

Ask The Big Question How Much Is Enough? The Product Is You
Air this 60-second spot during the Air this spot in time for Buy Air this one anytime
Third Ministerial Conference of the Nothing Day ‘99, Nov. 26
World Trade Organization, Nov. 27- Dec. 3

VHS viewing copy of the Culture Jamming Video – $35. Beta SP Broadcast Video – FREE
Call 1-800-663-1243, or fill out the insert card on page 72.
View Quicktime versions at www.adbusters.org

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 77
 NF

ADBUSTERS Millennial
Adbusters
2000 calendar
M o ments o f T rut h

Adbusters presents a postmodern

2000 Calendar $15
gallery of corporate satire. From
whimsy and wit to hard-hitting
political commentary, the Adbusters
2000 calendar is a must-have for the
frightening year ahead.

$15 each
Call 1-800-663-1243,
fill out the insert on page 72,
or order online at <www.adbusters.org>

In her documentary about animals, meat and culture, film-

maker Jennifer Abbott examines the forces in our society
that conceal, distort and legitimize factory farming.

a cow at my table
“... an extraordinarily compelling, powerful
and visually stunning documentary.”
— Vancouver International Film Festival

“ . . . idiosyncratic and refreshingly unpredictable...

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To order a VHS copy, send a check payable to

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P.O. Box 47053, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6G 3E1.

78 ADBUSTERS NO.27
 K A L L E L A S N
Founder of ADBUSTERS magazine

culture jam
UNCOOLING OF AMERICA TM
THE

Kalle Lasn argues that America is no longer a
country, but a multitrillion-dollar brand. In America™, the
principles of freedom and democracy have been swamped
by the cult of celebrity and the saturation marketing of
companies like McDonald's, Nike and Philip Morris. The
brands, products, fashions and entertainments — the
spectacles that surround the production of culture — are
our culture now. Only by "uncooling" these icons and sym-
bols, by organizing resistance against the power trust that
manages the brands, can America reassert itself.
The second American revolution is underway
and Kalle Lasn is one of its Tom Paines.
— Vicki Robin, Co-Author of Your Money or Your Life
This is the culture jammer’s call to reverse the suicidal
consumer binge while there is still time.
— George Gerbner, Founder of the Cultural
Environment Movement
A brilliant and essential survival manual for our species.
— David Korten, Author of The Post-Corporate World:
Life After Capitalism

To order an advance copy call 1-800-663-1243, or order online at www.adbusters.org

Hardcover – $25.00US/$37.00 CAN. (William Morrow, 1999) Due in bookstores this Fall

NO.27 AUTUMN/99 79
 To find out more about us

THE CULTURE Visit the Culture Jammers Campaign Headquaters

www.adbusters.org
JAMMERS NETWORK JOIN OUR NETWORK
Send a blank e-mail to jammers@adbusters.org
We are a loose global network of artists, activ- to receive news releases, campaign bulletins and

ists, writers, students, educators and entrepre- strategic updates.

neurs who want to launch the new social activist

WATCH THE CULTURE JAMMERS VIDEO
movement of the information age. Our aim is to To order call 1-800-663-1243
or order through www.adbusters.org
topple existing power structures and forge a
or fill out the insert card on page 49
major shift in the way we will live in the 21st
TALK TO US
century. We believe culture jamming will become editor@adbusters.org
artdirector@adbusters.org
to our era what civil rights was to the ‘60s, what campaigns@adbusters.org
feminism was to the ‘70s, what environmental webmaster@adbusters.org
subscriptions@adbusters.org
activism was to the ‘80s. It will alter the way we Tel: (604) 736-9401 • Fax: (604) 737-6021
1243 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver,
live and think. It will change the way informa- B.C. V6H 1B7, Canada

tion flows, the way institutions wield power, the USE US

way TV stations are run, the way the food, We are a full-service advocacy advertising
agency ready to create your next social
fashion, automobile, sports, music and culture marketing campaign — if the cause is right.
powershift@adbusters.org
industries set their agendas. Above all, it will
SUPPORT US
change the way we interact with the mass media
We are a non-profit, tax-exempt (501-c-3) organization that welcomes
and the way meaning is produced in our society. donations and foundation grants in three areas: 1. To help Adbusters grow
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Back Issues $7.50 each (includes shipping) www.adbusters.org 1-800-663-1243 Visa/MasterCard orders. BULK Issues FOR CLASSROOM USE: $2 each

No. 26 Summer 1999 No. 25 Spring 1999 No. 24 Winter 1999 No. 23 Autumn 1998 No. 21 Spring 1998
• The New Activism • The Politics of Boredom • The American Dream? • Blueprint for a Revolution • Pop,Product,Person
• Dérive • TV Violence • Media Carta • Planetary End Games • Buy Nothing Day
• The Big Question Campaign • Global Culture Jam 1999 • Urban Tsunami • Tibor Kalman Interview • The Fear Economy
80 ADBUSTERS NO.25
anarchy by design
>> Picture yourself joining
the world’s biggest, smartest, most creative
design firm to work 24/7 on a kind of
Manhattan Project of the mind. We start by
brainstorming on the Internet. Our goal is to
create, through trial and error and consen-
sus, through wild ideas and incremental
refinements, half a dozen truly great social
marketing campaigns that communicate the
absurd, cold-blooded unsustainability of it all
— the perversity of an economic system that
thrives off the death of nature and the backs
of future generations.
Our jammer/designers network naturally
divides into groups according to our various
strengths, specific interests and expertise —
food, fashion, automobiles, media, biotech. In
each of these areas we target a prime
offender like Cargill, Calvin Klein, GM, Disney,
Monsanto or Philip Morris. Our campaigns
ridicule the arrogance and self-serving agen-
das of these transnational giants. On a kind
of meta-level, we take the piss out of
consumer capitalism.
Then our image factory begins churning
out “product”: T-shirts, posters,
billboards, websites, radio and TV spots.
(Remember the old entertainer’s adage:
‘If they buy the premise, they’ll buy the bit.’
If our ideas are good enough, our campaigns
will deploy, and the budgets will appear.)
Riding the momentum of the early buzz,
we pull off a flurry of détournements,
boycotts and pranks. With each success, our
network grows, new hot minds enter the
system and new ideas are hatched.
We up the ante, from small-scale
happenings to large-scale actions. We
jam G-8 Summits and world trade meetings.
We launch suits against TV networks who
refuse to sell us airtime. We hold workshops
at design and film schools, run graphic
agitation contests and inspire a new
breed of visual communicators.
Then we wait. We wait for that inevitable
day of reckoning when the stock market
crashes, or the world is otherwise destabi-
lized. On that day we storm the TV and radio
stations and the Internet with our accumu-
lated mindbombs. We take control of the
streets, the billboards, the busstops and the
whole urban environment. Out of the despair
and anarchy that follows, we crystallize a
new vision of the future — a new style and
way of being — a sustainable agenda for
Planet Earth.
It wouldn’t take too many of us. A
global network of 500 passionate,
committed artists, designers and multi-
media pros could pull off the coup. Send
your ideas to imagefactory@adbusters.org
— Kalle Lasn
Designers...stay away from corporations that want you to lie for them — Tibor Kalman