A growing strand of contemporary practice, both in art and in poetry, has undergone a fundamental transformation in how it exists and persists. The traditional model of creation → completion has, in many cases, given way to something more fluid, recursive, and continuous. The endurance of the idea… its refusal to conclude… is the work itself. Social media provides a stage for this endlessness, allowing the performance to loop…loop…loop indefinitely, though the phenomenon extends far beyond digital platforms.
In this mode, artists and poets are not producing discrete “works” or “poems” so much as sustaining the life of a single idea through repetition // narration // persona. This is not simply about posting content online; it is about maintaining a living concept that can inhabit any context while remaining recognizably itself. The same gesture that flickers through an Instagram story may reappear on a gallery wall, in a reading, a lecture, or a catalog essay… each time recontextualized but unchanged at its core. Every venue becomes another stage for the same ongoing performance.
the poem reposts itself
until it is no longer a poem
just a gesture enduring / again / again
As a result, traditional hierarchies collapse: digital + physical :: ephemeral + permanent :: popular + institutional. A gallery does not legitimize what began online; a printed book does not finalize what first circulated as a caption or fragment. Each context simply offers another surface for the same enduring idea. The work becomes platform-agnostic, moving fluidly across spaces while the central performance of sustaining the idea continues… uninterrupted … interrupted … uninterrupted.
Most readers will recognize this mode from their own encounters with contemporary practice, the poet whose fragments migrate from Twitter/Instagram to chapbook to reading, the artist whose gesture appears equally at home in a story highlight and a museum label. This shift brings both liberation && constraint. Some poets and artists bypass institutional gatekeeping and maintain direct relationships with audiences, letting ideas evolve organically across contexts. There is something democratizing about work that does not require validation to exist and circulate.
Yet…
the pressure toward endless productivity / self-performance / visibility … risks exhaustion.
Risks repetition.
Risks sacrificing depth … for circulation.
Whether this transformation serves genuine artistic inquiry or merely adapts creative practice to the demands of attention economies remains unclear. We are still too close to the phenomenon to assess its long-term effects on the quality and durability of cultural work. What is certain is that a generation of artists and poets has internalized this logic of endless circulation, and their work—whatever its ultimate value—cannot be understood apart from it. The implications may only become visible in retrospect, when we can see which ideas proved worth sustaining and which were merely sustained.
The crucial question isn’t whether this transformation is good or bad, but whether it serves the art or merely the demands of constant circulation. When endlessness feels intentional—when the refusal to conclude emerges from genuine artistic vision rather than algorithmic pressure—it opens new possibilities for what art can be and do. When it becomes compulsive, art risks becoming indistinguishable from content.
What emerges is a new kind of practice: less about creating discrete objects for specific contexts and more about maintaining a living idea that can manifest anywhere. The artist becomes curator of their own concept, feeding it, adapting it, keeping it breathing across platforms and institutions. In this model, the boundary between creator and creation dissolves… and the art becomes inseparable from the performance of its own persistence—reposted, repeated, sustained.
Art does not end; it only persists, again and again.
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Laura Kerr is an award-winning Canadian visual artist and poet. In 2012, she was honoured with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her contributions to the arts and her long-standing commitment to art education.
She recently sold her art school to devote herself fully to her writing and art practice. Laura currently serves as Vice-President on the executive board of Plug In ICA, a leading contemporary art centre located on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba, Canada.
For over 30 years, she co-owned and taught at Paradise Art School, specializing in classical and contemporary art education. Throughout her career, she has explored the intersections of traditional mediums and digital technology, increasingly blending painting, drawing, and photography with generative processes.
Her current focus is visual poetry—experimental, image-based works that merge poetic ambiguity with technological play. By using digital tools in process-driven ways, she ensures the artist’s hand remains central—even in collaboration with machines.
She is also developing a body of experimental poetry criticism, written in collaboration with AI trained on her own work. These pieces challenge conventional interpretation and embrace uncertainty, forming a self-reflective loop between maker, machine, and meaning.
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