Terms of Engagement

UNDERSTORY presents Terms of Engagement, an interdisciplinary group exhibition curated by Stephen Calhoun and Susan Snipes. From August 13 to September 27, 2025, the exhibition features eight artists whose works explore how we connect across bodies, ideas, systems, and spaces. Participation, presence, and reflection are at the heart of this show, offering visitors multiple entry points to consider their role in shaping art's meaning.

In Terms of Engagement, the conventional act of "viewing” is transformed into a process of “doing”. The artists ask you not just to look at work, but to make a response, a decision, or a shift in perception. From ephemeral projections to conceptual surveys, from ecological materials to visual meditations, each work challenges traditional modes of spectatorship and proposes alternatives grounded in experience, play, inquiry, or collaboration. Terms of Engagement is expressly designed to provide rewards for spontaneous participation, creativity, and playfulness.

Ross Bochnek’s Light Touch features a fabric screen that responds to gesture, creating fleeting visual effects and inviting a sensory dialogue between body and image.

Stephen Calhoun’s Getting to Know blends personal introspection with informal ethnography. Visitors respond to a questionnaire and tag their survey with a visual mark. These results are brought together to build a public archive of experience and reflection.

In ai and us – where are we headed?, r ferris invites participants into a live, open-ended conversation with each other and with an artificial intelligence exploring urgent questions about memory, control, and the future of human-machine relationships.

Carol Langley’s Light Lounge turns an overhead projector into a participatory playground, where anyone can create ephemeral compositions and rediscover the joy of impermanence.

Belief in the Unseen, by Marian Lyndgaard and Susan Snipes, is a multisensory installation using light, sound, textiles, and scent to discover a deeper connection with plant life and the hidden intelligences of the natural world.

In the interactive video Undertow, Linda Post reflects on our environmental entanglements, tracing the flow of water from Northeast Ohio to Lake Erie and beyond.

Rex Young’s Disco Pendulum Dance Party fills the gallery with shimmering light and motion. Visitors manipulate disco balls and pendulums to cast playful, ever-changing projections of light and shadow.

UNDERSTORY is an artist-run gallery dedicated to experimental and conceptual work. Terms of Engagement reflects the gallery’s mission to support projects that value dialogue and risk-taking. The artists in this exhibition blur the lines between art and audience, gesture and intention, object and encounter.

Join us for the opening reception of Terms of Engagement on Wednesday, August 13, from 5-8 pm at UNDERSTORY, located on the RAMP (lower level) at 78th Street Studios in Cleveland.