Art was not always promised forever.
Some things were buried.
Some
burned.
Some
were worn smooth, repainted, eaten, forgotten.
Some objects completed their lives.
Then art entered museum time.
Ordinary time forgets.
Museum
time saves.
lower the lights
stabilize
the humidity
migrate
the files
replace
components
Enter the poem.
When did art stop being
allowed to die?
When
did the poem?
Not the poet.
We
have always permitted that.
A work fades.
Intervention.
A screen fails.
Intervention.
Language is restrained.
Intervention.
We have become very sophisticated at preserving impermanence.
The institution asks:
What is essential?
What
can we replace?
How
much change can occur before the work stops being the work?
Before the poem stops being poetry?
The artwork becomes an argument between matter and administration.
The poem never stopped being one.
Paintings are not permanent.
They’re dying at a speed we have learned to call stable.
Canvas
loosens.
Pigments
slowly fade.
Paper
yellows.
Stone
loses its face.
Language changes.
Some objects receive better medical care.
Some poems get life support.
Digital work can die without visibly decaying.
One day it opens.
One day it does not.
FILE
NOT SUPPORTED.
MODEL
DEPRECATED.
FORMAT OBSOLETE.
The ruin is no longer picturesque.
AI makes life tricky.
What are you preserving?
The image?
The
poem?
The
prompt?
The
model?
The
future?
When you disappear,
what
are you keeping?
The Interventionist's Fall
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.
