The PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art presents Terms of Use

Terms of Use brings together works that investigate the impact of technologies on the definition, production, and (re)framing of individual and social selves as we battle with living online and offline at the same time (away from keyboard). The show, which is both celebratory and critical, engages with the complicated sensations generated by our daily interactions with technologies: the potential to connect and envisage other locations, as well as the continual pressure to perform inside and for these spaces.

Terms of Use is inspired by a variety of publications, ranging from Ursula Franklin’s The Real World of Technology (1989) to Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminist (2020), and tries to challenge our entrenched conceptions of what technology are, how we use them, and to what extent they use us. The show is based on an intergenerational interaction between artists and authors, and it examines the power dynamics at work in our complex relationships with technology, stressing both the pleasures and problems of having to mediate oneself in these hybridized and semi-virtual worlds. These interminable mediations elicit other topics, such as the metaverse as a radical arena for self-actualization and determination, as well as consumption and extractivism in the context of “digital capitalism.”

Many of the works in Conditions of Usage are totally new, and the show also include Wu Tsang’s two-channel video installation The Looks, which makes its Canadian debut (2015).

Artists: Dara Birnbaum, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Mara Eagle, Brendan Fernandes, Francisco González-Rosas, Ilana Yacine Harris-Babou, Helena Martin Franco, Nation to Nation, Skawennati, Shanie Tomassini, Wu Tsang, VahMirè (Ludmila Steckelberg), Quentin VerCetty, Nico Williams

Curated by Daniel Fiset and Cheryl Sim.