Kalle Lasn

Kalle Lasn is the founder of Adbusters magazine and author of the book Culture Jam . He is also the CEO of the Blackspot Anticorporation.

Kalle wrote the following autobiography that is available at http://www.adbusters.org/network/kalle.html: I was born in Tallinn, Estonia, during the middle of World War II. In 1944, as the Russian army approached Tallinn, my family escaped to Germany. We lived in a displaced persons camps for five years. When I was seven we immigrated to Australia where I received my education, graduating with a B.Sc. in pure and applied mathematics. My first job was with the Australian Defense Department where I played computer-simulated war games in the Pacific Ocean. At age 23 I headed for Europe, but my boat stopped in Yokohama for two days. I fell in love with Japan and was unable to get back on the boat. During the 60s I ran a market research company in Tokyo and made enough money to travel around the world for three years. Then I returned to Japan, married Masako Tominaga and we immigrated to Canada. I started a documentary film making company. Over the next 15 years, my documentaries were broadcast on PBS, CBC and around the world, winning over 15 international awards. In 1989 I produced a 30-second TV spot about the disappearing old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, but to my dismay, none of the commercial TV stations would sell me any airtime. The Media Foundation, Adbusters Magazine and Powershift Advertising Agency were all born out of this incident and the realization that there is no democracy on the airwaves. I ve spent the last thirteen years editing and publishing Adbusters, launching social marketing campaigns like Buy Nothing Day and TV Turnoff Week, and fighting legal battles for the right to access the public airwaves.

Lasn lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Quotes said by Kalle Lasn:

Our mental environment is a common-property resource like the air or the water. We need to protect ourselves from unwanted incursions into it, much the same way we lobbied for non-smoking areas ten years ago.