An Impasse of Poets @ SAM

Live installation with 100 poets
SAM Downtown | Seattle Art Museum
8-9PM Thursday 11 June 2009

Line drawing by Richard C. Allin after Matisse

Event Details

Experience guerilla poetry at The Seattle Art Museum this summer. At 8pm on Thursday June 11, artist and poet A. K. “Mimi” Allin will present her first of three events at SAM Downtown – An Impasse of Poets.

The above list of local poets will move through the museum, gather around specific works and drape themselves over The Grand Staircase while reciting poetry from memory and in response to the artwork. The poet will physically and verbally embody SAM's galleries and artworks. Their voices will come together to form whispering walls—impasses—of poetry here and there.

Do Ho Suh’s artwork, “Some/One,” currently on display in SAM’s Ebsworth Gallery, is one of the works the group will address. The group hopes to bring this and other works to life through their words. “Some/One” takes the shape of an emperor’s jacket made of stainless steel military dog-tags. The parts symbolize the individuals that came together to make the larger whole. They also signify loss, but the result it a glorious jacket, larger and grander than its parts.

Come to the SAM on June 11th. Experience "An Impasse" first-hand in the galleries or hang out in the lobby and listen for free. Wireless microphones will broadcast the group’s poetic output, in live time, to the main lobby (Brotman Forum). As you listen, imagine the above mass of poets enveloping your favorite work, zigzagging down the halls and infusing the art you love with their words. An Impasse of Poets will perform 6 times over the course of an hour, creating impasses with their bodies and words on all 4 levels of the SAM.

Event Schedule

8:00pm – ESCALATORS b/w Level 2 & 3 (behind ticket booth in lobby)
8:15pm – 3 groups simultaneously address 3 areas
* Group #1 – TACK & JIBE EXHIBIT – hallway NE corner – Level 3
* Group #2 – THE PORCELAIN ROOM – Level 4
* Group #3 – THE ITALIAN ROOM – NE corner – Level 4
8:30pm – SOME/ONE by DO HO SUH – Ebsworth Gallery – Level 3
8:45pm – THE GRAND STAIRCASE inside 1st Ave & University St.

Why an Impasse?
It is a mission of Allin’s to bring poetry to unexpected places. She uses performance, visual art and participation as ways of inviting the public to think, act and create. Allin is looking not only for ways to interject poetry into our public and social spaces, but into our culture and daily lives.

Thank you
The poets of Seattle dedicate this performance to the Seattle Art Museum, to its permanent and special collections and to Mimi Gates.