Posters & Public Spaces & Lived Experiences
Imagine, you are a college student here at DePaul University (odds are you are somehow connected to the university as you are picking this up). Are you looking to get involved on campus? Are you trying to spread the word about your organization? How about you are trying to get people to come to your event? Or maybe you are looking for more information on a department? Or even searching for scholarship money to help finance your education? Maybe you are interested in something going on off-campus in the community? Odds are, as a student, you will say yes to at least one of those questions during your college career.
Believe it or not, there is a space where you can potentially answer all of these questions! But is it effective? Is it actually beneficial to those seeking this information? Not as much as it might seem.
DePaul has numerous places on campus for students, organizations, and departments to hang up promotional flyers or posters. These can advertise numerous different things, much like those opening questions that I discussed. These posters live on corkboards dispersed throughout the campus. They create an entirely different feel for the spaces that they occupy. You will find yourself walking down a hallway, glancing to your right and being overwhelmed by the number of posters shouting at you “JOIN US” “APPLY NOW” “DID YOU KNOW?” and other phrases of that sort. The colors combining together in a swirl of every color imaginable, painting a very unpleasant site that creates a sense of anxiety in many a viewer. These corkboards are home to ultimate information overload — so how are they even remotely effective in achieving the goals of those who placed them there? Once these posters are hung up, they create their own narrative and journey just by hanging there and interacting with passersby.
Approval
These posters did not get here by accident. They did not hang themselves up. They did not create themselves. Each and every poster holds the story of their own creation, their importance, and their goals. But before these posters can perform their dance on the corkboards throughout the buildings at DePaul they have to undergo a judgment process. Much like the students entering classes where they will be evaluated on whether or not they meet certain criteria with their essays or tests, these posters are evaluated on whether or not they are suitable to be hung up on campus. This process occurs through the Office of Student Involvement — yet who posited them with the authority to provide their literal stamp of approval on these posters? The answer is probably some higher-up in the university, meaning even these posters are not free from the bureaucracies of power-dynamics and control in higher education. I do not want to leave you with the impression that I think anyone should be able to hang anything and everything they want, it is just important to note this step along the poster’s journey toward fulfillment.
Once the poster passes the most important exam of their life and receives the coveted stamp of approval they are ready to take center stage on their corkboard. But it is not all sunshine and daisies for the poster now, this stamp, also serves as their death sentence. Each stamp of approval is also the signifier of when this poster will meet the trashcan (hopefully recycling bin, but their journey is unknown by that stage).
Death Comes for All
It makes sense that those in power are seeking to limit the length of engagement each poster gets to have. Is this a question of equity? Ensuring each poster gets its due diligence and time in the spotlight? Or is this just another way of policing and maintaining the image of the university?
Every two weeks the corkboards that were once overflowing with performances from posters from all reaches of the university, are stripped bare. Each metal tack slowly ripped away from each poster, breaking the connection between tack, poster, and corkboard, only for the tack and corkboard to reunite sans poster. The poster is stacked up with its fellow comrades and lowered unlovingly into their final resting place in the trash or recycling.
This execution occurs regardless of if the event itself has passed, or the deadline has come and gone, it relies entirely on the stamp it received just a few weeks prior.
Rebirth
Slowly but surely each corkboard begins to bloom with the latest posters passing the test of approval. Each poster added changes the entire feel and dynamic of the corkboard. More and more posters begin to live on the corkboard, layered, crowded, overwhelming.
These boards are meant to assist in the outreach and overall understanding of the happenings across the university and how individuals can get more engaged with the community. It is meant to serve as a gateway to relationships, connections, and experiences. Yet the atmosphere that is created through the crowding of information emits a sense of anxiety and stress — the last thing a college student needs more of. Each poster has the potential to stir up various emotions within the viewer — regret, guilt, feeling like they are not involved enough; excitement, friendship, opportunity. They are powerful. And yet, the sheer abundance of them can strip that power away entirely, making them just papers on a board.
The atmosphere that these posters create on their corkboards is made with good intentions, yet rather than serving as an insight into the happenings of the university, it serves as another instance to embody the cluttered overstretched ambition of the college experience.
Much like many of the occurrences on college campuses, these corkboards strewn about the university littered with posters upon posters are a great idea in theory. But in practice, the effects they have on the spaces they inhabit and the people they encounter may not be as great of an experience. These posters serve as a gateway to new organizations, events, and other potentially life-changing interactions. Yet their cycle of new posters, the death of old posters, and layered nature often creates a feeling of stress and a sense of being overwhelmed rather than an invitation like they so often are trying to accomplish. These posters represent so much more than just posters however, they truly embody the culture of the college experience in current times: a culture of feeling the need to be involved and do everything imaginable a culture of short-lived opportunities, a culture of being dictated by the powers at play, and eventually meeting the end of the road and leaving university behind.
