Palm: All Awake in the Darkness, is an installation by artist duo Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris (Sayler / Morris) in collaboration with Ian Boyden that was commissioned for the opening of the American Writers Museum.  The installation includes live palms, a sound design, and centers around an original video work by Sayler / Morris, titled Threshold. Threshold can adapted to other site-specific installations. In March 2020, a stand-alone edit of Threshold was created for The Merwin Conservancy, intended for meditative on-line viewing at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Palm is inspired by the life and work of the American poet W.S. Merwin and meditates on Merwin’s capacity to invoke in his readers a sense of the wakefulness of the world. Merwin is not only a celebrated poet, having won nearly every major poetry award, including the appointment of poet laureate, he is also a visionary gardener and environmentalist. Over 30 years ago, Merwin embraced a piece of certified wasteland in Hawaii, and, along with his wife Paula, tree-by-tree grew one of the most abundant and species-rich palm gardens in the world—a garden that aspires to be a forest, as Merwin has put it. The installation also includes a small sample both of those who influenced Merwin and those who were influenced by him – an ecology of ideas. See full press release here.