Online Group Exhibition
#Terms and Conditions Apply
Terms and Conditions Apply is a proposed online Group Pavilion curated by ELSEHERE for The Wrong Biennale 8. The exhibition looks at the systems that increasingly determine how we enter, participate, move, work, communicate, and belong.
DEADLINE
January 5, 2027
DEADLINE
January 5, 2027
THE CALL
Terms and Conditions Apply
We encounter terms and conditions everywhere, yet they are rarely conditions we are actually able to negotiate.
A platform asks for consent before we can continue. An institution requests another document. A border requires proof. An algorithm evaluates a profile. An application remains under review.
The language is familiar:
Accept All
Verify Your Identity
Permission Required
Your Application Is Being Reviewed
Access Pending
Try Again Later
Behind this language are systems that decide who is trusted, who is admitted, who must provide more evidence, and who remains waiting.
Terms and Conditions Apply examines the relationship between technology, bureaucracy, identity, access, and power. Across immigration systems, digital platforms, workplaces, schools, financial institutions, healthcare, and public life, people are increasingly translated into documents, profiles, categories, rankings, scores, and datasets.
These systems often present themselves as neutral, efficient, and necessary. Their consequences are rarely neutral.
AN ONLINE EXHIBITION
Terms and Conditions Apply is conceived specifically as an online Pavilion.
The website is not simply a container in which artworks will be placed. Its interface may become part of the exhibition itself.
Visitors might be asked to accept changing terms before proceeding. Certain works may appear only after a period of waiting. Access may depend on what a visitor agrees to, refuses, reveals, or selects. Status messages, verification screens, loading sequences, permissions, incomplete information, and restricted pathways may shape how the Pavilion is encountered.
A visitor may click “I Agree” and discover that the conditions have changed.
They may encounter:
Access Granted
Access Denied
Access Pending
The final digital structure will be developed in response to the selected artworks. These mechanisms will not function as decorative simulations of bureaucracy. They will allow questions of consent, waiting, control, access, and uncertainty to become part of the encounter itself.
CURATORIAL FRAMEWORK
The Pavilion begins with a familiar gesture: clicking “I Agree.”
Most of us do it automatically. The alternative is usually to leave.
Consent under these conditions occupies an unstable position. We technically agree, yet rarely determine the terms. We exchange data for participation, identification for mobility, visibility for access.
The same structure extends beyond the screen.
Immigration systems ask people to turn their lives into applications and evidence. Employers rank candidates. Financial systems convert individuals into scores. Platforms classify behavior. Institutions decide which forms of identity, qualification, and experience can be recognized.
A human life becomes increasingly legible through information that can be processed.
A passport.
An application number.
A visa category.
A user profile.
A credit score.
A biometric record.
A dataset.
What cannot easily be processed risks becoming invisible.
Terms and Conditions Apply brings together artists examining migration, bureaucracy, surveillance, digital identity, classification, algorithmic judgment, data extraction, verification, waiting, restricted access, and unstable forms of belonging.
The Pavilion is interested in what happens when participation is offered only under conditions written elsewhere.
Who writes the terms?
Who is able to click “Agree” without consequence?
Who is repeatedly asked to prove who they are?
And what happens when following every rule still does not guarantee entry?
TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY × OPTIMISE WHATEVER
Terms and Conditions Apply approaches optimisation through the conditions imposed on the person being processed.
Systems promise greater speed, security, convenience, accuracy, and efficiency. Yet optimisation also requires standardisation. Complex human lives must become readable to systems designed to sort, compare, rank, approve, and reject.
A process can become faster without becoming fairer.
A system can operate efficiently while producing anxiety, exclusion, surveillance, and unequal access.
The Pavilion asks what optimisation demands from those who must live inside these systems, and what forms of human experience remain difficult to measure, classify, or improve.
What We Are Looking For
Clarity of direction
We look for submissions, proposals, and expressions of interest that show a clear sense of purpose, context, and relation to the opportunity.
Rigor and care
We value work that is thoughtfully developed, carefully presented, and attentive to the responsibilities of artistic, scholarly, editorial, or public-facing practice.
Distinct perspective
We are interested in voices, practices, and proposals that bring a specific position, method, language, or field of experience into view.
Openness to complexity
ELSEHERE welcomes work that can hold tension, ambiguity, research, experimentation, and layered meaning without becoming vague or unfocused.
Relevance to context
Each opportunity has its own framework. We encourage applicants and contributors to read the full call carefully and consider how their work, experience, or proposal enters that specific context.
Before You Submit
Please review the full opportunity description before submitting. Each call, program, or expression of interest may have its own eligibility, format, deadline, review process, and required materials.
Depending on the opportunity, you may be asked to provide:
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basic contact and professional information
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a short bio or practice statement
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a project description, proposal, manuscript, work sample, or statement of interest
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links to relevant work, publications, portfolios, websites, or profiles
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technical, spatial, editorial, or contextual information where applicable
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any additional materials requested in the specific call
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Please submit materials that are clear, relevant, and carefully selected. Strong submission materials do not need to be excessive. They should help us understand the work, practice, experience, or proposal on its own terms and in relation to the opportunity.
Incomplete, unclear, or unrelated submissions may be difficult to review.
Review & Consideration
Submissions and expressions of interest are reviewed according to the specific purpose of each opportunity.
Depending on the context, review may consider artistic strength, conceptual clarity, scholarly rigor, editorial fit, feasibility, field expertise, language capacity, professional experience, public relevance, and alignment with ELSEHERE or STRATUM’s current programs and publication priorities.
Selection, invitation, publication, or participation is not guaranteed. Some opportunities may involve further communication, additional materials, interviews, technical review, editorial review, or confirmation before final decisions are made.
ELSEHERE approaches review as a process of attention, not only selection. We are interested in how artistic, scholarly, and cultural practices may enter wider fields of relation, publication, public presentation, and future development.
