Q&A: Alumnus discusses inspiration behind satirical posters around campus

Alumnus Nathan Guzik is weary of seeing people walking around campus glued to their phones and failing to take the time to digest their often peculiar surroundings.

Guzik, who graduated from UCLA with a degree in history 2015, has posted 20 to 30 satirical posters at a time around campus since his senior year that put a twist on advertisements for research studies, textbook sales and other UCLA activities. The aim, he said, is to invite people to engage with things that people might not see or consider on a typical day.

The co-founder of UCLA’s satirical newspaper The Westwood Enabler and former member of the on-campus stand-up comedy group Shenanigans, Guzik is no stranger to the comic scene. His posters present a humorous take on many of the common advertisement posters seen – or rather, often ignored – around campus. He attended high school in Germany, where he stenciled and tagged around the city.

The Daily Bruin’s Sarah Ahern sat down with Guzik to discuss the inspiration for his art, the responses he receives from the student body and his goals to change the way students scrutinize our surroundings.

Daily Bruin: You are the co-founder of The Westwood Enabler. Can you tell me about that?

Nathan Guzik: So that is something that is a satirical paper modeled after “The Onion.” We wanted to make something catered specifically towards UCLA. … We wanted to take more of a strictly news style writing like “The Onion.” Luke Moran, another student here, (and I) started that a little over two years ago. This month will actually be the two year anniversary. So, it’s a way to give writers a little more freedom in what they are writing. With The Westwood Enabler, we wanted to give writers a little bit more freedom and ability to mess with the form a little bit, and just be able to create a little bit more.

DB: Are these stories similar to the flyers that you post around campus?

NG: The first flyer that I ever made – I’m sure you’ve seen the “Are you Asian American and do you drink alcohol?” posters around campus – when I first saw those, it seemed like a joke to me. I don’t know what about it is so transparent because they tell you exactly what they need. It’s a study, they need Asian Americans that drink alcohol. But it seems so frank that it is almost disarming – they are almost telling you too much about what they’re trying to do … So I thought, what if we take that same structure and go all the way, so to speak, to make it seem like they are really trying to make Asians drunk. That was supposed to be a plan for “The Enabler,” but then I thought, because I am going to be posting things more or less without the permission of putting things up, I didn’t really want to have the organization get any flack for it, so I thought it might be a little bit safer if I just put my own name on it.

DB: What was your original inspiration for these flyers?

NG: It was definitely the flyers that I would see around campus that were legitimate. Sometimes even now I ask myself, “Wait, did I make that? That seems ridiculous!” There are just weird calls such as they need employees for this or that, or things like “You like shopping? We will hire you to shop!” Just kind of those strange offers that almost seem satirical, but they are not. Or you’ll see things that are crudely designed like “Need textbooks?” or “Need a tutor?”

The majority of the people that are viewing or coming in contact with my flyers don’t even actually see them. There is only a small percentage of people that will stop and look at them and say “Wait a minute – something is wrong with this.” The Asian-American poster was the one that I thought, you know what, this is too ripe for humor. I need to make one specifically about that.

DB: What is the best response that you have gotten from a student towards one of your posters?

NG: I don’t really have any way to see how people are perceiving it. It’s not like a museum where you can have it curated or whatever. That is why I started putting photos of them on Instagram and having the flyers sort of be a way for them to follow-up on not only who is engaging with this one, but also all my other collections of flyers.

I think the best response is probably when I’m hanging something up and someone comes up to me and asks me “How can I do this? How can I get involved?” I almost wish it was a club, and I could tell people where to meet me! But since it is more of a solo effort, it is all really down to me.

DB: What would you say is the ultimate message you are hoping to get across through these flyers?

NG: There are a lot of observations from them, and obviously people are going to take from them what they will. But I think the biggest message is for people to wake up. So much of what we do is focused on our phones. Staring at our iPhones to get to class. We are so absorbed. It doesn’t seem revolutionary for me to say this but we are so absorbed in technology that we don’t stop to see the world around us. I think that is brought into stark contrast when there are things that are so ridiculous surrounding you that aren’t even on your radar. And so it is supposed to encourage people to look, to investigate, to not assume that they know what something is just because they looked at it.

Compiled by Sarah Ahern, A&E contributor.