‘Upgrade’ highlights the growing presence of artificial intelligence and its influence on how labour, value, and human relevance are imagined today. Speculative futures often treat human labor as obsolete, viewing human presence as an inefficiency to be optimized away. While our culture is saturated with visions of total automation and post-human efficiency, this exhibition highlights how these predictions often mask a reality of continued exploitation.

Rather than treating AI as a purely technological development, ‘Upgrade’ approaches it as a cultural and psychological condition. Information systems shape not only how work is performed, but how people understand their own position within these systems.

The exhibition is informed by critical perspectives on post-humanism and political economy, while remaining attentive to the hidden human labour that supports the illusion of algorithmic autonomy. Between myth and infrastructure, between imagination and material reality, a persistent tension has taken hold.

Venue address: HKADC SHOWCASE, UG/F Landmark South, Wong Chuk Hang