THRESHOLD : VIdeo (14:22 and 21:37 edits) and site-responsive installation

Threshold is a video work designed for site-responsive video installations. It was originally commissioned by the American Writers Museum in Chicago for an installation titled Palm: All Awake in the Darkness by Sayler / Morris with Ian Boyden.

The video was shot entirely in and around a small room that the poet W.S. Merwin built for meditation. This room sits in the middle of a palm garden that Merwin and his wife Paula grew on a wasteland left by colonial plantations in Maui. Tree-by-tree, they transformed the land into what Merwin called a “garden that aspires to be a forest.” The title is taken from one of Merwin’s poems in which he writes, “what did I have to do with anything I could remember / all I did not know went on beginning around me…” The 14:22 edit features a curated selection Merwin reading from his work interspersed with sounds from the garden-forest.

There is also a special stand-alone 21:57 edit of this piece made for the Merwin Conservancy.