Ji Lee

From our protest and black culture, Culture jamming intrigued me due to it’s anti corporate style. There’s something in works that go against the norm that captivate me. The act usually involves a meme that parodies iconic logo’s or symbols used by corporate brands, such as Coca-Cola or Apple. The meme is often comical or satirical and made to question the brand’s values and message towards their consumers, especially to highlight any sugar-coated negativity associated with the brand. An example is Apple’s iPhone 6 campaign being changed to ‘iSlave’ by Hong Kong students to showcase that Apple use sweatshops in China. (Cole, N, 2018)

Cuture jamming is influenced by Frankfurt School’s critical theory, which focuses on “the power of mass media and advertising to shape and direct our norms, values, expectations, and behaviour through unconscious and subconscious tactics.” The motto of the act is for society to reflect on how easily they consume and are influenced by brands and by undermining brands through their own logos or symbols, the memes are made to evoke a reaction such as shock, fear, shame or anger by the consumer, to hopefully make a change. (Cole, N, 2018) An Artist that has taken part in the act of culture jamming is Ji Lee.

(Designerd, no date)

Ji Lee graduated in 1995, from Parson School of Design in New York with a BFA in Communication. Lee worked as a designer for Frankfurt Balkind Partners and then worked at Tsang Seymour Design before moving for four years to Saatchi & Saatchi NY and winning the ‘World Changing Ideas Award’. He worked for Droga 5 as a branding director in 2006 to 2008, where he worked at the Google Creative Lab as a designer and creative director. He is now an art director and designer that currently works as a Communication Designer at Facebook. His work is often featured in the New York Times Magazine and Wired. (Design Indaba, no date)

Lee part took in culture jamming with his ‘Bubble Project’ after he was fed up with his corporate art director job. He said "The kinds of ads being produced were very dull and boring and it was frustrating to see these ads taking up space all over the city, so I wanted to do something about it as a creative person and a consumer." (Wortham, J, 2008)

In the early 2000’s, Lee printed over 50,000 speech-bubble shaped stickers and stuck them on to public advertisements for anyone to fill in. He leaves them blank and then comes back after a while and photograph’s what people have written. He wanted people to say what they really wanted to about anything without any censorship. (Design Indaba, 2005)

(Droog, no date)

Lee said that he carries the stickers in his bag all the time, so that he can place them whenever he sees a poster. They are usually placed on posters at ‘bus stops, telephone booths, wall postings and subway ads’. He said that he knows what he’s doing is illegal as it is considered vandalism but that gives him a thrill and extra courage to keep doing it. Generally, those that know it’s him are supportive of his rebellion but he has received three police fines and he always tells the police he’ll ‘never do it again’. (Design Indaba, 2005)

(Bubble Project, 2008)

The subject of the bubbles are always different but he says they all fall in to different themes such as “political and social commentaries, some are jokes about sex and drugs, some of them are personal messages”. He said he "wanted to change the dynamic of advertising from a corporate monologue into a public dialogue, so people would be active participants rather than passive viewers." Stefan Sagmeister, who is a designer, wrote a book about the bubble project and said “Everybody wins with this project: The advertiser gets more people to look at its (now personalised) posters, the public finally gets a chance to talk back to the advertisers, and the rest of us are able to enjoy these little jolts of joy by seeing and reading the transformed poster. And how much more interesting they become. I also find that the writings many times speak the truth.”. (Design Indaba, 2005) The bubble project inspired people to spread speech-bubble stickers throughout their own countries worldwide. (Wortham, J, 2008)

(Fairs, M, 2007)

My interpretation of the bubble project is that it’s brilliant. Sometimes, advertisements can be perceived as overly-polished and too perfect, so as a consumer it can be a bit annoying to hardly see any ads with the raw truth, so for people of the general public having their say and replying to the ads is just really cool and new to me.

A more recent culture jamming act was by ‘Protest Stencil’ who put up ads at bus stops in London defaming Facebook’s message to it’s consumers. They said their work are "honest Facebook ads," and that “to Facebook, you’re not a ‘friend’, you’re the product on sale." (Blazenhoff, R, 2018)

(Proteststencil, 2018) Left and Right.

Wortham, J, (2008), Behind the Meme’s: Ji Lee, Bubble Project Media Jammer, Available at: https://www.wired.com/2008/04/behind-the-me-1/ (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Cole, N, (2018), Understanding Culture Jamming and How it Can Create Social Change, Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/culture-jamming-3026194 (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Design Indaba, (no date), Ji Lee, Available at: https://www.designindaba.com/profiles/ji-lee

(Accessed: 09/12/18)

Design Indaba, (2005), The Bubble Project, Available at: https://www.designindaba.com/articles/interviews/bubble-project (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Blazenhoff, R, (2018), Street artists subvertise Facebook bus stop ads in London, Available at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/21/street-artists-subvertise-face.html (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Designerd, (no date), Ji Lee: Everything is Connected [Online]. Available at: http://www.designerd.info/archive/ji-lee-everything-connected/ (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Droog, (no date), The Bubble Project, Amsterdam by Ji Lee [Online]. Available at: https://www.droog.com/project/bubble-project-amsterdam-ji-lee (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Bubble Project, (2008), Image of bubble project example [Online]. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/28348930@N07/2707186878/in/pool-bubble_project (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Fairs, M, (2007), The Bubble Project by Ji Lee [Online]. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/28348930@N07/2707186878/in/pool-bubble_project (Accessed: 09/12/18)

Proteststencil, (2018), Instagram post [Online] (left image) Available at:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmgCAhknnv7/?utm_source=ig_embed (Accessed: 0912/18)

Proteststencil, (2018), Instagram post [Online] (right image) Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BmbKDvQHRFP/?utm_source=ig_embed (Accessed: 0912/18)