Alison Nguyen has been commissioned by High Line Art to develop a new film for High Line Originals in New York, debuting on 8 September 2026.
High Line Originals, part of the High Line Channel, is a commissioning program that invites curator-nominated, emerging US-based artists to propose new video works grounded in the park’s context and created for its diverse publics. Each year, High Line Art also commissions and produces site-specific projects—spanning video, sculpture, installation, sound, murals, and more—that broaden how public art is encountered across the park’s continually evolving landscape.
-
Alison Nguyen’s upcoming film traces the obscured industrial, cultural, and nuclear histories of the High Line’s severed existence in Westbeth Artist Housing. Up until its adapted conversion in 1970, the space was formerly occupied by Bell Labs where critical cinema, telecommunication, and military technologies, including components later used in the atomic bomb, were researched. Combining sculpturally re-filmed archival documents, performance sequences, and layered fragments of audio interviews, the film weaves together infrastructure, memory, and technology to bring to light how the legacy of nuclear power continues to shape our collective and subconscious experience.
Text and image courtesy of High Line Art.
Learn more --
https://www.thehighline.org/art/high-line-originals/
