Ian Walker: The world pioneers of culture jamming were Australia's own BUGA UP, the Billboard Utilising Graffitists against Unhealthy Promotions who for a decade from 1979 were making enemies of tobacco and alcohol companies with their eye-catching creative reworking of public advertising spaces. All you needed was a clever slogan, a steady hand and a spraycan on a long stick. But since the government regulations banning tobacco advertising came into play, BUGA UP have been up to bugger all.

When you're sick of subverting the advert, you can always try sabotaging the product. The best example of this in recent times goes to the gorgeously-named BLO, the Barbie Liberation Organisation.

And what has happened to Barbie? She's the talk of GI Joe.
GI Joe: Sieg Heil ! Direct fire at that Goon squad.
Barbie: Let's make plans for the weekend.

Ian Walker: The people bankrolling the BLO was a savvy group of cultural terrorists calling themselves RTMark (pronounced "Artmark"). They're a kind of clearing house cum funding body for politically-motivated pranks, and they've cleverly aped the structures and jargons of a financial institution, even down to a smarmingly corporate-sounding promotional video.

Ian Walker: Their spokesperson is Ray Thomas.

Ray Thomas: A lot of people are still thinking of power in the old terms, and we have tried, and we're trying to focus thought on what's wrong with corporate power, which is at least the equal of government power. They're so adaptable, and they're so organic that it's hard to speak of any one corporation as the enemy. It's more the system that allows tremendous abuse.

Ian Walker: The RTMark project list reads like a cultural saboteur's wet dream, complete with cash incentives.

The core of the RTMark system is its database of unfulfilled sabotage projects.

$1,000 for a worker at a film editing house, or video duplication outfit, to insert other scenes of a shockingly educating nature into popular movies or videos. Viewers must see the scenes, and it must be reported in the media.

$1,000 for a worker at a major metropolitan newspaper who significantly alters an issue and changes most of the articled text in an interesting way.

$3,000 to re-name a major chemicals weapons incineration plant after Ronald Reagan.

Place leaflets detailing the poor working conditions that exist for those who assemble athletic footwear in major brand athletic shoes, their shoeboxes or the shopping bags containing them before or as they're being sold.

Ray Thomas: Projects can be seen as stocks, and when you support a project you're investing in it. When you contribute, say, $100 to a project that you would like to see accomplished, you are sort of investing in the accomplishment of the project. What you want to see out of that project is cultural dividends; you want to see a beneficial cultural event take place because of your money, as a reward. What you're doing is you're investing in the improvement of the culture; that's why we've modelled it after the financial sector because really these words like "profit", and "investment" and "dividends" and so on, they've really contaminated the language and we want to reclaim those words and use the power in those words. And so we talk about cultural dividends; we talk about for-profit companies are really... RTMark is a for-profit company, we're for cultural profit.

Investors and workers together ensure that RTMark continues to be the industry leader. It brings sabotage and blacklisted cultural production into the public marketplace.