Call for Artwork Submissions: IA Current 2025 Exhibition

Deadline: September 12, 2025 11:59PM ET

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Curated by Lingxiang Wu, the 2025 IA Current exhibition explores the compulsive cycles of digital engagement—loops of desire, performance, and temporary relief. At the heart of this exhibition is the concept of the "digital itch": a persistent, phantom sensation beneath our skin, mind, and heart, which compels us to endlessly scroll, search, and perform on digital platforms. This itch represents an insatiable longing for recognition, validation, or connection, and the technology we use acts as a pacifier that simultaneously triggers and soothes this unnameable sensation.

This exhibition addresses a collective burnout arising from our toxic relationship with media, digital technology, even one another —a relentless cycle of itch and quick scratch. The theoretical underpinnings of this inquiry draw from Byung-Chul Han and Lauren Berlant. Han’s "aesthetic of the smooth" describes visually gratifying online content—such as Mukbangs or thirst traps—that offers immediate pleasure without deeper substance. Conversely, Berlant’s "cruel optimism" reflects on the false promises of techno-optimism that suggest our desires can be fulfilled through digital means, while in reality we often settle for a result that is close enough and experience that is “good enough.” Within this strange parasocial terrain, the digital itch progressively builds up through fleeting moments of displacement, where false promises intersect with reality, leaving us unfulfilled hence wanting something more, something abundant, until eventually we no longer know what we truly long for, only that we crave it.

We invite submissions for new media works that critically respond, engage, explore, or even question the phenomenon of the digital itch—reflecting on this unidentifiable sensation that resides in our constant ambiguous digital entanglement. We encourage artistic explorations using various media, including single or multi-channel video, multimedia installation, kinetic sculpture, net art, interactive digital objects, sound art, VR experiences, performance, or experimental new media.

Questions for consideration:

• When have you experienced the digital itch, did the itch encourage you to use certain technology or you feel the itch after using certain digital tools?

• In what ways can this digital itch be manifested visually, sonically, and haptically through art?

• How can digital artworks use technology or digital tools to embody refusal, misuse, or rejection?

• If desire and pleasure are used as a form of manipulation in our online user experience, then can the practice of edging be a survival strategy?

• How can the practice of edging be integrated in art, through acts of tease, slowness, idleness, or ineffectiveness like "brainrot" content?

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Submission Requirements

• Project description, including whether the work is completed or in progress (<250 words)

• Documentation (5 images or 5 minutes timed media maximum)

• A detailed description of artwork dimensions and anticipated installation and technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials expected from InterAccess)

• Artist statement (<250 words)

• CV and/or Portfolio (optional, recommended)

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Submission Process  

Send submissions to iacurrent@interaccess.org with subject line: IA Current 2025 | <ARTIST NAME> in one of the following formats:  

• Single PDF (images linked or embedded, maximum 20MB)  

• Zipped folder (maximum 20MB) attached to email or through file hosting service (GoogleDrive, Dropbox, etc)  

• Video/ASL (10 minutes, 100MB maximum)  

We ask that applicants ensure their files are properly formatted, with no broken links, and file share permissions are functional for downloading and viewing. We may not reach out for corrections if submissions are technically inaccessible.

Floor plans for InterAccess’s gallery space can be shared upon request. Gallery floor area is approximately 26’ x 38’ with a gallery wall height of 15’-6”.  

InterAccess is committed to equity and strongly encourages applications from equity-deserving communities, including individuals who are Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, LGBTQ-identified, Gender Diverse, Two-Spirit, and Persons with Disabilities.   

Note: iacurrent@interaccess.org is for applications only. Direct all questions about your application to art@interaccess.org.

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Exhibition Details

• The exhibition will take place in person at InterAccess (32 Lisgar Street, Toronto) from October 29 – November 29, 2025

• Selected artists will be notified by the end of September 2025

• All artworks must be ready for exhibition by October 17, 2025  

• All participating artists will receive a CARFAC fee

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Office Hours

For insight into the application process, applicants may attend office hours at the following times:  
- September 5, 2025, 11:30AM – 1PM ET
- September 9, 2025, 4:30 – 6PM ET

Office hours are hosted on the InterAccess Discord and create space for specific or quick questions about the application process. Interested applicants may drop in or register for a time slot here; Discord invitations are sent upon registration.  

Contact

Please contact InterAccess’s Programming Manager at art@interaccess.org with any questions about your application; iacurrent@interaccess.org is for applications only.

Note: InterAccess is closed from August 24 – 30 and we will not be responding to emails during this time. Allow 2-4 working days for a reply to any inquiries.

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About the Curator

Lingxiang Wu is a Chinese queer visual artist, chronically online researcher, and compulsive overthinker currently based in Toronto, Canada. His work critically engages with digital aesthetics, invisible labor, and algorithmic culture, addressing our entanglement within the attention economy. Spanning photographic collage, video, animation, and installation, his practice explores how contemporary digital culture and technology influences our ways of being under the spell of neoliberal capitalism, humorously trying to process his own productivity dysmorphia. His research-driven projects, Digital Landfill and Performative Digital Bodies, examine the cycle of production and consumption facilitated through desires and immediate gratifications. Wu has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and has exhibited internationally in Canada, the U.S., and Korea. He holds an MFA from OCAD University and is committed to fostering critical discourse on digital culture and imagemaking.

The InterAccess Current (IA Current) program supports the professional development of emerging curators and artists interested in new media and electronic practices. Each year, InterAccess selects an emerging curator, who works closely with InterAccess staff to conceptualize and execute an exhibition of works by emerging artists. "Current" refers to the now, but it is also an energetic charge that causes light, heat, and all manner of electronic life; an apt metaphor for emergent creative practices within the ever-expanding field of new media. 

Image courtesy of Lingxiang Wu, The Mist: The Bulge, The Ball, The Voluptuous