(re)Assembly: Action, Ephemera and Student Unionism

(re)Assembly draws from the UMSU Archives and Art Collection, alongside documentary and audio, in examining the ways in which ephemera—shirts, banners, badges, and posters—serve not simply as inactive records of the past but as agents of collective memory and future action.

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Duration: 3 - 28 February 2025

Diving into the UMSU archives and UMSU Art Collection, this exhibition seeks to attune to the contemporary resonance of collective action. (re)Assembly traces the temporal and material echoes of student activism, examining the ways in which ephemera—shirts, banners, badges, and posters—serve not simply as inactive records of the past but as agents of collective memory and future action. 

Rather than turning upon timelines or rigid thematic groupings, the internal logic of the exhibition is accumulative, relational and intersectional, recognising the connectivity between gestures, messages, motifs and methodologies of collectivity. Through material records of the past, (re)Assembly underscores the transformative capacity of collective action.  

Just as each object in the exhibition builds upon the preceding, so too does collective action. Shaped and informed by the actions and understandings of the past, we see that the present and future are continuously reconfigured by the social, political, and affective forces that converge and diverge across time. 

(re)Assembly: Action, Ephemera and Student Unionism is supported by selections from the UMSU archives and the UMSU Art Collection, alongside documentaries and recordings of collective action from across the globe. Significant amongst this installation are numerous posters from the UMSU Red Planet Poster collection, alongside documentary works from the Mosireen Collective / 858: An Archive of Resistance, filmmaker Igor Bezinović and Liberation Films. 

 
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