H&M High Line Festival

[monet2u]

man this sounds pretty good.

High Art At High Line
Updated 01:11 PDT Thu, Apr 05 2007

Arcade Fire, Air, The Polyphonic Spree, Laurie Anderson and jokester Ricky Gervais are among the artists hand-picked by curator and co-founder David Bowie to perform at the inaugural outing of the H&M High Line Festival.

Other musical acts on the schedule include Deerhoof, The Secret Machines and a triple bill featuring Daniel Johnston, Bang On A Can All Stars and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

The 10 day festival is being described as a "cultural mash-up" by organizers and will be held May 9 - 19 along New York City's west side in a number of notable venues including Radio City Music Hall (Arcade Fire), the Theatre at Madison Square Garden (Air and Gervais), the Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center (The Polyphonic Spree), the High Line Ballroom (Anderson, Johnston's triple bill and The Secret Machines) and Irving Plaza (Deerhoof).

In addition to the musical and comedy acts on the roster, the event also includes performances by 87-year-old spoken word poet Ken Nordine, Anderson and Australian chanteuse Meow Meow "incited by John Cameron Mitchell;" an exhibition by photographer Claude Cahun; a night-time public art event by artist Laurie McLeod and a retrospective of ten of Bowie's favorite Spanish language films culled from the last one hundred years.

Although Bowie helped found the festival and is this year's curator, subsequent festivals will be curated by a different artist he will help select each year. Bowie says he was thrilled to be chosen as the event's first curator.

"I thought it a very cool deal to be asked to curate the High Line Festival," he said. "The request was for me to choose artists and acts that I myself would go out of my way to see." "Although this inaugural year will be modest in scale, weve been pretty lucky in that many whom I asked have accepted."

Bowie added that he purposely chose several emerging artists to perform alongside the more established acts, saying "I would really hope the exposure this festival affords will help these folk get the attention they deserve."

Additional information on the festival as well as a full listing of performers, dates and venues is available at www.highlinefestival.com. Tickets for individual festival events are currently available at the festival's web site and through Ticketmaster and Ticketweb.

[ChrisLovesYou]

The Legendary Stardust Cowboy will join the Spork onstage for a supercharged symphonic-choral ultra-mindfuck version of Paralyzed.

YEEEEEEHAAAAAAAW I GOT A GAL WAY CROSS TOWN SHE WON'T COME TO SEE ME 'LESS I PULL MY SHADES DOWN PARALYZED PARALYZED WHAOAAAAAAAAAAA

[sam]

Odd that they don't even mention what the High Line is. I guess it's old news to New Yorkers by now, even though it hasn't (re)opened yet.

http://www.thehighline.org/

[monet2u]

gosh, I didn't even think about it to be honest, thanks for the info!

[eebs]

Odd that they don't even mention what the High Line is. I guess it's old news to New Yorkers by now, even though it hasn't (re)opened yet.

http://www.thehighline.org/

Thanks for the link Sam, some of those old photos of New York are fascinating. I did my dissertation on a disused railway line and the lost opportunities / potential opportunities for the line where it hadn't been developed [/geek]

[mere1975]

I just heard/saw/read something about the High Line preservation efforts. . . where was that??

- Mere "deja vu" 1975

[sam]

The idea that there were at-grade freight lines cutting through lower Manhattan up until the late 30s/early 40s is pretty amazing to me. No wonder that hundreds of people got squished. With the piers almost all gone, the High Line is one of the last reminders of the industrial past of the city.