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What is a Whirl-Mart?
The action is comprised of a group of anti-shoppers ranging in size from 1 to 50 members. The ritual consists of activists/actors arriving at a Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us or another chain superstore at 12-noon on the first Saturday or Sunday of the month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. Eventually, all of the participants locate one another and form a single-file chain of anti-shoppers which weaves, wanders, and whirls throughout the store for about an hour. It is a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling. It is a symbolic display of the will to resist the capitalist ideology.
'Whirl-Mart' is an experiment that can be approached from several different angles. As a work of art, it examines and blurs the boundaries that have been established between performance art, protest, living sculpture, and direct action. As an action of resistance, it utilizes the power of silence in occupying private consumer-dominated space with a symbolic spectacle. As a ceremony, it is a counter-ritual to shopping that transforms the super-store and its wall-to-wall array of products into a surreal and colorful cathedral. And what the heck-- it's just darned fun!
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Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance International Whirl-Mart HQ World Changing Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future Critical Mass Critical Mass is not an organization, it's an unorganized
coincidence. It's a movement ... of bicycles, in the streets. Rev Billy's Church of Stop Shopping Lots of great scripts from/for performance interventions
with a heavy focus on Starbucks. Commerce
Jamming Commerce Jamming source page. AdBusters A global network of those who want to advance the new social
activist movement of the information age. Commercial Alert wants to keep commercial culture within
its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting
the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and
democracy. No Media Kings Jim Munroe's guide to doin' it for yourself Booksense.com Internet book search that sends your order to your nearest
independent bookstore. Starbucks Delocator Search that helps you locate locally owned alternatives to Starbucks
Media
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media
outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth Project of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to strengthening and supporting independent and
alternative journalism. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the first to identify
threats to our basic rights online and to advocate on behalf of free expression
in the digital age. Declan
McCullagh's Politech Politech is the moderated mailing list of politics and technology.
Topics include privacy, free speech, the role of government and corporations,
antitrust, and more. MediaChannel.org The global network for democratic media.
PLUS the News Dissector's Weblog. CorpWatch.org counters corporate-led globalization through education,
network-building and activism.
ABC is clambering aboard the bandwagon of networks that allow
advertisers to place products in reality series by signing two major
marketers, Schick and Cingular Wireless, to embed brands in all 13
episodes of a new show, "All American Girl," which has its premiere
tonight.
Product placements, a staple in the early days of radio as well as
TV, are returning to favor among advertisers and networks. Both the
buyers and sellers of commercial time are eager to find alternate ways
to reach an audience at a time when viewers are increasingly using
technology to ignore spots by zipping, zapping or TiVo-ing them into
oblivion.
The marketers and networks are gambling that the benefits of
placements will outweigh the castigation by critics who complain about
the blurring of the boundaries between programming and advertising.
Those lines have recently been rendered fuzzier by reality series like
"American Idol" on Fox Broadcasting and "Survivor" on CBS that are
replete with product plugs within the shows themselves from advertisers
like Coca-Cola, Ford Motor, General Motors, Mars, the Old Navy division
of Gap and Reebok International.
Asked if such placements unduly blur the line between content
and commercialism, Ms. Payne of Cingular replied: "That is one opinion,
certainly. But I feel the consumer is much more sophisticated this day
and age, able to recognize the difference."
2002 Product Placement Awards the "winners" page is non-existant, but a brief "history" of product placement, and a ton of links....
The Product Placement Bible er, the Bible...with product placements
Business Week's Product Placement Hall of Fame
Product Placement in video games Gimme a Bud! the Feature-Film Product Placement Industry (thesis)
MediaChannel.org
