Aster Hoving (University of Amsterdam) and Solange de Manche (ENS Paris), members of the UU Humanities Honours Research Project and collective The New Utopians, are creating an installation that will include a travelling exhibition by the student curator group Strijd ∞ and a video created by the New Utopians, “Students and their university,”which Aster and Solange have translated for the purpose. The installation will be part of the annual arts festival of the ENS – Les 48h des Arts, and shall be showcased from the 4th till the 6th of May, 2018, at 45 Rue d’Ulm.

“Studio Insurrection” is an installation looking to document and to revive our collective memory of recent student movements in order to forge new tools for upcoming struggles. The studio will bring the travelling exhibition of the curator group Strijd ∞ to Paris: an exhibition that gives a visual impression of both the 2015 Dutch student and staff movement The New University, and earlier movements in the Netherlands, such as the ones from 1969, 1978, and 1990. The New University, acting within a spirit of direct action, students coming from the entire country occupied a central building of the university of Amsterdam for a period of three months where they set up a parallel university with its own radical programme. Speakers such as Jacques Rancière, David Graeber, and Gayatri Spivak showed their support by giving lectures. Studio Insurrection will also project a video by the collective The New Utopians: a video that gave a voice to the student body of Utrecht University, asking them imagine their ideal university. Looking ahead, studio insurrection will also distribute information on topics of major concern for the future of the accessibility to higher education and its diversity.