Rewriting the Rules: Art Without a Single Author
How collective curation and decentralised models are reshaping the creative landscape.
The question of who decides what counts as culture has become impossible to ignore. For decades, a small circle of curators, critics, and institutions defined the boundaries of value and legitimacy. Today, that authority is steadily fragmenting. A new generation of practitioners is dismantling established hierarchies and replacing them with collective structures that distribute authorship and responsibility across networks of contributors.
One clear example is AWITA’s “Build Your Own Artworld,” a recent gathering at the Warburg Institute. Rather than offering theoretical critique, this event was designed as a laboratory for alternative models. Artists, business leaders, and cultural strategists worked together to prototype frameworks for shared leadership and transparent commissioning. The underlying premise was that culture does not need to be managed by a singular vision. Instead, it can emerge organically when stakeholders trust each other to collaborate openly.
The exhibition “Fear Gives Wings To Courage,” staged across all fifteen Cork Street galleries, took this thinking into practice. By coordinating their efforts rather than competing, the participating galleries demonstrated that collective action can amplify visibility and create richer conversations. This approach also challenged the scarcity mindset that often characterises the commercial sector. It suggested that a more inclusive, cooperative ethos can also be sustainable.
Design cooperatives such as Spreeeng and Stocksy reflect this same impulse to share agency. These groups operate through consensus rather than hierarchy, redistributing decision-making power and redefining how creative labor is valued. Their success points to a cultural appetite for mutualism and transparency. In a time when creative work is increasingly precarious, these cooperatives also offer a model of resilience.
These shifts echo the SUPERWRX philosophy of distributed agency and neo-authenticity. They propose that cultural value arises not from centralised institutions but from networks of trust and shared intention. While this decentralisation brings challenges—consensus processes can slow progress and shared authorship can complicate accountability—it also signals a profound rethinking of how cultural ecosystems function.
This is not merely a passing trend. It is a deeper commitment to making culture more porous, more relational, and more honest. As old structures continue to weaken, hybrid authorship offers a glimpse of what comes next: a landscape where no single figure holds the pen, and where creativity is understood as a collective negotiation rather than a solitary act.
