Call for Submissions: New Hypermedia

New Hypermedia: Subverting Big Tech proposes new uses for web technologies to re-centre local relationships and playful creative expression. Hypermedia is a term that was first used in 1965 by Ted Nelson to imagine digital media that is interconnected in complex and non-linear ways. In some ways, this vision became the Internet.

At the turn of the millennium, the early Internet held the promise of expression without limits, crossing international borders and weaving past gatekeepers of legacy media publications. In the spirit of anarchy, freedom, and global connection, millions of chat rooms, forums, personal websites, and blogs flourished.

Over the last 15 years, a handful of companies have created centralized platforms of power and control — YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter/X — that have redefined the terms of creative expression to fit their advertising and data-mining objectives. These platforms keep us distracted and dependent, weakening our bonds with our friends and neighbours. In 2025, artists and writers cannot count on reaching audiences, or even creating, without depending on these platforms.

Call for Submissions

By changing the framework of how published work can be accessed and shared on the Web, we can influence the kinds of writing and artwork that seem possible in the first place. It will help us unlearn habits built over the last 15 years of creating for the benefit of algorithms, and will help us start creating for ourselves again. We are strategically using big tech’s tools in unexpected ways to create intentional interplay between real-world relationships and online experiences—building what scholar Fred Moten might call "fugitive spaces" outside the surveillance economy.

We are looking for submissions of fiction, poetry, essays, art, or other interactive works that can make use of one or more of the following features. We describe examples of how a project might subvert these tools, but are open to how artists might choose to work with each feature:

• Location tracking is typically used by adtech and data-mining companies to build customer profiles of people browsing the web; in turn, we will subvert the use of location tracking by providing alternate versions of a story based on the reader’s location. Location data will be processed privately on the visitor’s device.

• Visitor analytics track the number of visitors and pageviews, usually harvested by Google to turn every website into an advertising platform. We will subvert visitor analytics to encourage cooperation between strangers, unlocking a “multi-reader mode” where two or more people who are visiting the site at the same time must make decisions collectively about where to scroll and what to click.

• Link tracking occurs when we share links online: they often contain embedded tracking codes that tech companies use to build “shadow networks” of your friends and contacts, and to suggest what you should read next. We will use link tracking to subvert that model: shared links lead to a printable zine format that visitors have to distribute in the physical world if they want to “share” it.

• Date and time modifications are an experience wherein big tech platforms feed us different content depending on the day of the week or the time of day, based on what they think will hold our attention the most. We will subvert this concept with stories or art that change based on the time of day, phase of moon, or current weather. Perhaps different scenes of a story will be displayed at different times, and readers would have to revisit the story to experience it in its entirety. They would never be able to experience the whole thing at once.

Please share expressions of interest in a single PDF document, with the subject line “Responding to Call for Submissions: New Hypermedia” to textilekw@gmail.com by May 23, 2025. 

In your expression of interest, please include:

• A letter of interest, including a description of your proposed submission and how it relates to the vision of “reclaiming web publishing” (max 500 words);

• A note of which features, as described above, you will incorporate in your work (max 150 words)

• A bio (250 words), including a reference to experiencing barriers to publication (optional, please see below)

• Up to 5 images or links of past work. Past work is not limited to artistic projects.

Selection Process and Timeline

• Information Session: April 28, 2025 at 7:30pm (virtual)

• Submission Deadline: May 23, 2025

• Notification to Selected Applicants: by June 6, 2025

• Development Period: June-August 2025

• Publication: Fall 2025

About Textile and Our Commitment to Barrier-free Publication

As a publication founded and led by cultural workers who have experienced barriers to publication ourselves, we strongly encourage submissions from creators who have experienced systemic barriers to publication, including but not limited to BIPOC, 2SLGBTQ+, disabled, and neurodivergent artists and writers, as well as those facing economic, geographic, or technological barriers. We understand how platform algorithms and content policies can invisibly restrict certain voices and subject matter, often disproportionately affecting marginalized creators. 

If relevant to your practice, we welcome you to share your experience with these barriers in your bio (optional). Whether you've faced explicit rejection or more subtle forms of digital gatekeeping, this context helps us better understand diverse perspectives in our selection process and build publishing alternatives that don't replicate these exclusionary patterns.

We will be commissioning 4-5 works as part of this project. Selected contributors will receive compensation at the rate of $0.75 per word for pieces of approximately 400 words (approximately $300 per piece, tax inclusive). Once your piece has been chosen, we will support in co-developing the piece in a way that preserves your creative vision and intent.

— Sam Nabi & Textile

Textile is a hyper-local arts collective supporting writers and artists through mentorship, publishing, and curation. Learn more https://textilekw.ca/ and follow along @textilemag_.

Sam Nabi is Textile’s web editor. His artistic practice incorporates technology, hip-hop, and public space interventions. As a community organizer, he seeks to build bridges between art and activism while being rooted in place.