tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture, is pleased to announce that we are accepting submissions for our upcoming issue, FLUX. tba is an annual peer-reviewed journal organized by graduate students of the Visual Arts Department at Western University in London, Ontario (CA). It provides an interdisciplinary forum for emerging and independent artists and scholars by bringing together studio, art history, cultural studies, theory and criticism, creative writing, and related fields. Academic articles, poetry, short fiction, and artworks are all welcome! Experimentation and risk is encouraged.

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Drawn from the Latin fluxus, meaning to flow, FLUX is to describe the continuous and ever expanding, a term that conjures visions of an entropic swirl which defies categorization. This, however, is only a cursory definition, and in reality, the term has numerous possible meanings and associations. The meaning of flux is unfixed; inferring liquidity, uncertainty, transformation, or the chaotic, the discursive or heterogeneous. Constant flux, an Indigenous philosophical concept that characterizes earthly creation as a continuity, is described by Blackfoot scholar Leroy Little Bear as a “cosmic cycle of constant motion…as manifested in cyclical or repetitive patterns, emphasiz[ing] process as opposed to product,” (1) Employing a different kind of flow, the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and 70s privileged process through experimental participatory performance, poetry and noise that defied discursivity. In George Maniunas’ 1963 Fluxus manifesto, he described the movement as a “revolutionary flood and tide in art,” although, in a turn of events indicative of the inconstancy of Fluxus, no one agreed to sign Maniunas’ proclamation (2).

For our 2025 issue of tba: Journal of Art, Media and Visual Culture, we seek submissions that inscribe flux with varied associations and applications through visual artworks, creative writing and scholarly articles. Taken literally, flux might embody the “revolutionary tide” as the animacy of water systems, the power of aqueous forces that shape environments while nurturing bodies and ecosystems. At once, flux might also refer to the uncategorizable: the constant cyclical motion described by Little Bear, or discursive rejections of hierarchical categorization in the forms of rhizomatic thought, posthumanism, more-than-human relations, the abject and affectual.

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We invite you to submit your work by June 7th, 2025. Submissions must be completed through the journal’s website, which uses OJS software to ensure anonymity to potential reviewers. Emailed submissions will not be accepted. We recognize the systemic barriers immersed in scholarly Call for Submissions, and we encourage applicants who seek support in crafting their submission to contact Imogen Clendinning at tbawestern@gmail.com.

tba journal is operated by the graduate students at Western University. We do not offer artist fees at this time.

Imogen Clendinning, Editor
Yijing Li, Associate Editor, Art History
Anahí González Terán, Associate Editor, Studio Art

For inquiries, please write tbawestern@gmail.com
website: www.tbajournal.ca

Citations:
1. Leroy Little Bear, “Jagged Worldviews Colliding,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (University of British Columbia Press, 2000) 78.
2. Natasha Lushetich, Fluxus: The Practice of Non-Duality (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2014) 2.