Speculative Fictioning the GSASA Archives Exhibition, May 2024

I was sat in bed with my morning coffee, before a day in here, thinking about how to hang a baking pan, what I could forage from the back caverns of the building, and what kinds of ways I have changed the Students’ Associations. That morning I read the phrase “No institutions exist to help us survive, we survive because of each other” by Nat Raha. This feels true of the Students’ Association too. It sings to me of the threads we have drawn out within these two rooms here. It sings to me of the many bodies that have made this beautiful mass of material. It sings to me of these small but deep snapshots of what I am a part of.

There is so much time and labour held within every single object we have here, as well as all those tucked away in the back room. There’s plenty of joy, sparks of anguish, a dash of exhaustion, amongst all the hope and communities. We are so grateful to everyone who has donated their prints, zines, books, posters, objects, and stories to our archive. It is imperfect {reference the book} and messy and we love it.

The objects and material exhibited here spans from 1927, when the Student’s Association formed, to the current day. This project has been a form of legacy building that is trying to move away from the kind of nostalgia that keeps you in the past but instead tries to draw from the energy to help us embody where GSASA might move towards.

We will now have a small permenant archive room on this second floor of the Students’ Association, that you can visit, and we’ll be continuing to play around with this project into the summer. We also have installed a permanent (however long that may be) display in the Vic downstairs which showcases material from the archives and our speculative storytelling out from them.

Speculative Fictioning workshop, Tuesday 21st May at 5pm: free booking here

Our thanks to

Speculative Fictioning the Archives Project, 2024: Anne-Marie Copestake, Francis McKee, Janaki Mistry, Lottie Riechmann, Meg Gray, Shenghan Chi, Ted Tinkler

For the Vic wall (semi-)permanent speculative display: Anne-Marie Copestake, Janaki Mistry, Leah Sinforiani, Lottie Riechmann, Meg Gray, Shenghan Chi, Ted Tinkler

For the Speculative Fictioning the Archive Project Exhibition curation and instal: Anne-Marie Copestake, Lottie Riechmann, Meg Gray, Shenghan Chi, Ted Tinkler

Thanks to Helena Powell, Josie Chanfi, and Lydia Harris for their beautiful commissioned responses to the GSASA Archives.

Thanks to GSA Archives for their generous loan of archive material related to GSASA housed within their collection. Made possible by the GSA Student Partnership Project Fund. Thanks to Williams Bro for drinks for our opening night event.