Reclaiming Public Space Although it may seem that the invasion of advertising into public space is inevitable, some media activists “categorically reject the idea that advertising Marketing – because it buys its way into the public space – must be passively accepted as a one-way flow of information. (Klein, 2000, p.281) Countercultural networks of culture jammers, billboard liberators, and some street artists use various subversive strategies to intervene against the invasive presence of outdoor advertising. They strongly believe that streets should not be owned by corporations. The act of culture jamming was largely influenced by the Situationist practice of hijacking, which used techniques to divert or subvert the context of imagery in order to create new meanings. Adbusters, the anti-cosumerist media foundation, is described as the “headquarters” of culture with the aim of changing “the way information circulates, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in society.” (adbusters.org) Kalle Lasn, co-founder of Adbusters, says the process of subverting ads can be used as a powerful tool that "cuts through the hype and glitz of mediated reality and momentarily reveals the spectacle hollow that it contains” (Lasn, 1999, p.131) Cultural jamming can therefore be used as a protest to reveal the truths hidden behind the spectacle of advertising. A common obfuscation technique is to use humor and parody, with simple billboard modifications of "Coca-Cola becomes Killer-Cola, Shell becomes Hell, Just Do It becomes Just Screw it" (Bell; Goodwin, 2012, p.6). Adbusters, for example, notably created a campaign (Fig. 5) which featured the fictional character 'Joe Chemo' for humor and 'unco...... middle of paper ... ...allow the public a response, and that the walls of the city are spaces that must be recovered and used as places of free communication. A simplistic example, however, of a thought-provoking work by Banksy (Fig. 6) was a blank billboard that featured only the painted words: “The joy of not being sold anything.” This ambiguous billboard provokes reflection on how the saturation of outdoor advertising has become a normal part of the everyday environment. It is common and controversial to view a billboard as anything other than a means of encouraging consumerism. Subversive strategies share the same objective of actively recovering the space invaded by advertising. These activists challenge and reject the idea that the public should have to ask permission to have areas free from commercialization and instead protest for social change by reclaiming the space..