Serena Korda
Missing Time: June 5–7, 4–7pm
On the High Line at 25th St.
Alexandra Bachzetsis
PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me: June 25 & 27, 8–9pm
Private Song: June 26 & 28, 8–9pm
On the High Line at 14th St.
Will Rawls
Uncle Rebus: July 10–12, 5–7pm
On the High Line at 17th St.
Commissioned and produced by High Line Art, High Line Performances are a series of live, often participatory events that transform the park into an open-air theater. This series has previously featured works by artists including Kevin Beasley, Simone Forti, Maria Hassabi, Alison Knowles, David Lamelas, Ryan McNamara, Benjamin Patterson, Mungo Thomson, Naama Tsabar, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company, among others.
Serena Korda (b. 1979, United Kingdom) has developed Missing Time, a new immersive sound performance for the Falcone Flyover, between 25th and 27th Streets. Missing Time considers the history and mythology of the High Line as a “thin place”—a portal to other worlds—while exploring its transformation and invisible histories. The piece features the a cappella group Mouthful (Dave Camlin, Sharon Durant, Bex Mather, and Katherine Zeserson), who improvise across specific frequencies derived from the planets otherwise known as the “Music of the Spheres.” Visitors experience the singers’ voices and manipulated radio waves through stereo headphones that play a mixed version of the sounds captured through a stereo microphone located under the pathway and mixed by the artist.
Alexandra Bachzetsis (b. 1974, Zurich, Switzerland) presents and performs two works in a series: the solo work PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me and Private Song, with Bachzetsis, Sotiris Vasiliou, and Thibault Lac. For the first piece, Bachzetsis stages banal and mutating gestures from myriad gendered references—including Greek Zifteteli and Greek Zeibekiko dance. Private Song proposes framing as a perceptual strategy for questioning the spectator’s relation to moving bodies on stage. The piece features popular Rebetiko songs from the 1940s and 1950s, and works with wrestling, Hollywood gender models, and the pictorial history of representations of love and battle.
Will Rawls’s (b. 1978, Boston, United States) performance for the High Line, Uncle Rebus, is a choreographed meditation on Uncle Remus, the fictional narrator of the Southern folklore compilation, Brer Rabbit Tales. Invented by white Southern folklorist and author, Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus was a composite identity based on Harris’s account of African-American oral cultures on the plantations where Harris served as an apprentice. Manipulating a large-scale keyboard composed of removable letters, the dancers will spell out a long-form story, destabilizing the fictional dialects of Harris’s imagination, further exploring the limits of linguistic sense and written speech.
Support
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support for High Line Art is provided by The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and Charina Endowment Fund. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Corey Johnson.
About High Line Art
Presented by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art commissions and produces public art projects on and around the High Line. Founded in 2009, High Line Art presents a wide array of artwork including site-specific commissions, exhibitions, performances, video programs, and a series of billboard interventions. Curated by Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and produced by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art invites artists to think of creative ways to engage with the uniqueness of the architecture, history, and design of the High Line and to foster a productive dialogue with the surrounding neighborhood and urban landscape.
Serena Korda, Missing Time and Will Rawls, Uncle Rebus are organized by Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator; Alexandra Bachzetsis, PRIVATE: Wear a mask when you talk to me and Private Song are organized by Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, and Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.