In Limited Lifetime Warranty, the human body and identity are rendered as consumer goods whose value is contingent, unstable, and subject to continuous conditional maintenance. This work extends the logic introduced in You, Inc. and Recall Notice — that the individual is not simply observed or measured, but positioned as a traded asset — and pushes it into a colder register: support exists, but only in the language of denial.
The warranty becomes a symbolic contract between the individual and the systems that claim to sustain them. It promises durability while assuming failure. It alludes to protection while disclaiming responsibility. The offer of care is simultaneously the withdrawal of accountability.
Framed through the aesthetic vocabulary of product documentation, Limited Lifetime Warranty reveals a cultural paradox: we are encouraged to optimize, perform, and "maintain" ourselves for longevity, yet the moment our emotional, physical, or existential life deviates from specification, coverage is voided. Burnout becomes "user error." Aging is "expected degradation." Grief is reclassified as "environmental damage." The human condition is redrafted into a troubleshooting manual.
By borrowing the forms of service agreements, disclaimers, and administrative correspondence, this work highlights the ways institutional language reshapes lived experience. Bureaucracy reframes vulnerability as liability, care as cost, and interdependence as inefficiency. The artist interrogates not only how support is withdrawn, but how the individual is made to feel responsible for its withdrawal.
The denial becomes the artwork.
The appeal becomes participation.
The acceptance of terms becomes consent without comprehension.
Limited Lifetime Warranty ultimately asks: If support for being human is conditional, what happens when the condition is humanity itself? The piece does not answer — instead, it returns the question to the viewer as a stamped form, filed, processed, declined.
The system remains operational.
Whether we do is not guaranteed.