Yesterday, February 27th, saw the publication of Advertising Shits In Your Head, a new manual for understanding and engaging in ‘subvertising’ – an increasingly popular form of activism that involves amending public advertisements for subversive ends.
Authored anonymously, and aiming to combine theory and practice, the text takes its inspiration and material from existing subvertising groups such as brandalism to offer a concise but impressively comprehensive overview of the rationale, strategy, and experiences of subvertisers the world over.
With in-depth and often shocking stories from the history of advertising in the 20th century, the text outlines in disturbing detail the various ways in which advertising shits in our heads, and just how damaging this has been for our societies over the past hundred years or so.
The book continues from its historical and theoretical arguments, through to a series of guidelines, including invaluable legal information, on how to get involved with subvertising activities – providing an invaluable resource not just to budding AdHackers but to activists of all stripes. Finally the text concludes with a series of vivid case studies – lucidly demonstrating the impressive radical potential of this type of civil disobedience.
The book is for sale in paperback, or can be accessed online for free.
“Advertising Shits In Your Head concisely describes, through unique first-hand accounts, the range of concerns addressed by today’s subvertising community. From a right to the city argument, to the belief that advertising is the biggest obstacle to avoiding catastrophic climate change, Advertisement Shits In Your Head envisions a movement looking far beyond culture jamming and corporate identity sabotage.” – Jordan Seiler, Public Ad Campaign.
“Advertising is a gigantic machine for creating human misery. It’s a sustained psychological assault on the population and it is hard to overstate the brutal and permanent damage it does to us as individuals, to society, and to the planet itself. This book is a manual on how to begin the process of dismantling the machinery of advertising: how to interrupt it, sabotage it, and one day, maybe, destroy it entirely.” – Darren Cullen, Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives.
The book is published by Dog Section Press, a not-for-profit publisher that prints with Calverts, a workers’ cooperative.
