Kalle Lasn
58, Estonian subvertiser
As Kalle Lasn watched young people protesting at the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, he felt paternal pride and, for the first time in 20 years, optimism. Around him, he saw the men and women that he believes will lead what he calls the "new cultural revolution." Don't write Lasn off as just another leftie loony. This Estonian-born activist is the father of "culture jamming," a loosely organized movement fighting a consumer culture that he calls "psychologically corrosive." His primary outlet is Adbusters magazine, a bimonthly packed with cultural commentary and advertising spoofs. For example, Joe Camel of cigarette fame is transformed into Joe Chemo, complete with hospital gown and IV drip. The spoofs are small, Lasn says, compared with Big Tobacco's "multibillion dollar effort over the past 30 or 40 years." His crusade may be driven less by a desire for something new than a wish for a return to a simpler age. Born in Tallinn in 1942, Lasn fled Estonia with his family when the Germans invaded two years later. The Lasns spent five years in displaced persons' camps before immigrating to Australia. They had no money and few possessions. Yet Lasn remembers those early years as some of the happiest of his life, marked by simple pleasures like swimming in rivers and cooking dinner with his mother. A stint in advertising in the 1960s left him cold. After he moved to Canada in the 1970s, he became disillusioned with the broadcast media, which he saw — and still sees — as inaccessible to the common man. Lasn says the industry's high costs and business practices prevent the average Joe or Jane from using the airwaves to "talk back against the dysfunctional messages that dominate television." His core concern is the question of control. He believes that commercialism has hijacked society, especially in the U.S. and, to a lesser degree, Europe. Culture jamming is a populist response, a way to fight corporate interests for control of what Lasn calls the mindscape. Just as there has recently been more focus on the health of the physical environment, he says, "we have to clean up the toxic areas of the mental environment." The fight may be fiercest online, as the Internet is the one domain that is still untamed. Lasn sees both opportunity and danger in cyberspace. There's room in the electronic realm for the freedom of communication that he believes is lacking in other media. But he also sees danger in the radical departure from what he calls the natural environment — the relatively low-tech world he grew up in — arguing that society still doesn't know the full effects of "swimming on the electronic beach." Lasn isn't all gloom and doom. He left Seattle with good vibes about culture jamming's prospects, Adbusters is expanding aggressively around the world, and special events like the annual Buy Nothing and car-free days are reaching activists and nonactivists alike. For Lasn, that's progress. "My life has just become a fight," he says. "I wake up in the morning and can't wait to get going."
— By Jeff Chu/London
PHOTO: RICH FRISHMAN FOR TIME
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