Resignified City: Brandalism, Countercultural Appropriation, and Semiotic Dispute over Advertising Space in Bogotá
Abstract
Brandalism, understood as the critical intervention of advertising discourses, has become one of the most visible expressions of contemporary urban counterculture. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bogotá, this article analyzes local typologies of brandalism and their relationship with broader processes of inequality, protest, and popular creativity. Studies show that these practices resignify advertising spaces as symbolic territories of dispute, where citizens appropriate logos, slogans, and campaigns to produce alternative narratives. As an original contribution, the concept of countercultural appropriation is introduced to explain how brands, in their attempt to absorb criticism, transform dissent into a communication strategy, institutionalizing what was originally resistance. This analysis situates the Colombian case within global trends of adbusting and visual activism (Schacter, 2020; Gonçalves, 2022), demonstrating that brandalism is simultaneously a form of political agency and a contested arena in the face of market-driven symbolic cooptation.
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Crossmark
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