Parallel Lines: A Project on NYC’s High Line

Photo, Bob Horton

Six artists and writers, Michael Cataldi, John Houck, David Kelley, Hans Kuzmich, Jens Maier-Rothe, and Jeannine Tang, are investigating the use and development of public space. Through their documentary, Parallel Lines, the artists focus on New York City’s recent development of The High Line, and ask pertinent and timely questions.

How does public space get imagined, funded, inhabited, used and produced? Who defines public space, and for what ends? How are populations distributed for access to space, quality of life, housing and survival? How do zoning and property development produce relations of privacy and publicness? What are the visual, architectural and environmental methods that render space public? How do we identify with each other as “the public”, and what feelings and emotions contour these experiences? How can we imagine and create the public space we desire?

In their own words, the artists respond:

Parallel Lines is a documentary and a demand for the public space we need, told through lives, histories and developments parallel to the High Line, a park on New York City’s West Side. The High Line opened to the public in June 2009, and has become a frequently celebrated example of public space for community, culture, innovative design, and urban renewal. As the High Line becomes a model public space, we critically investigate its aesthetic, economic, legal, political, architectural and urban development processes and the history of its surrounding neighborhoods[.]

Check out their website and keep up with the project development here. (Disclosure: I was interviewed for this documentary and appear in the video available on their website.)

Tags: Art Law, documentary film, land use, public and private space, urban space