Due to heavy rain in the forecast, tonight’s High Line Tour: From Freight to Flowers has been canceled. We look forward to seeing you on a future tour!
your inbox
Sign up for the High Line newsletter for the latest updates, stories, events & more.
Xin Liu
NOAA: A Fall Towards Home
8 – 9pm
June 24, June 25
7:30 to 8:30pm
In the Sunken Overlook, on the High Line at 17th Street
Xin Liu fuses art and science in her sculptures, installations, videos, virtual-reality experiences, and publications. As an engineer and researcher, she has led and successfully launched two payloads to the International Space Station and one suborbital payload onboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard system, and has flown three parabolic research flights. Through her artistic practice, Liu considers the personal implications of our technological advancements, constructing narratives that provide space to imagine ourselves in a world of rapidly expanding possibilities.
For the High Line, Liu presents NOAA: A Fall Towards Home, commissioned by High Line Art and co-produced with Onassis ONX. Building on recurring motifs in her practice, the work takes the audience through the life cycle of one National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite. Reimagined as a sentient being, the satellite comes to life via intimate diary-like entries, narrating its journey as a permanent celestial migrant. Its real-world counterpart—NOAA-15—was launched in 1998 and became part of a long-term mission of mapping global climate change. In Liu’s work, performers embody the machine’s journey from launch to degradation and eventual retirement. Behind them, LED screens display original text and video told from the satellite’s perspective, alongside fragments from the history of orbital photography, tracing the evolving gaze through which Earth first came to see itself from above. The performance will also feature a brief lecture by the artist.
NOAA: A Fall Towards Home explores the depth of despair and hope inherent in exile and disconnection. While outer space is often imagined as an escape or the new frontier, this satellite grapples with profoundly human concerns: Where is home? Who am I? Where do I belong? By transforming this overlooked, Earth-born machine into a character, Liu invites us to empathize and reconsider our own ideas of duty, estrangement, and connection.
On June 16, 2025, NOAA officially ceased data delivery from NOAA-15 and its model series. This decision comes at a precarious moment for environmental science and research. In recent months, the current administration has proposed eliminating entirely the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and the next generation of satellite programs have seen their contracts cancelled. Ultimately, NOAA: A Fall Towards Home invites us to see ourselves more clearly, and serves as a soulful reminder: Earth is what allows us to be human.
First to launch and first to fade, NOAA-15 wanders through the skies with childlike curiosity and sage wisdom, interpreting each observation as a small wonder. Launched in 1998 from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, they find solace in simply continuing to witness their home from afar.
Like a first-time traveler arriving at distant shores, their thoughts drift toward new horizons rather than what was left behind. NOAA-15 greets each orbit with wide eyes, discovering wonder where others might see exile—naive, hopeful, and quietly thrilled by the act of arrival.
Defying their original two-year lifespan, NOAA-15 has spent decades faithfully recording weather systems, cloud formations, and shifts in Earth’s atmosphere. No longer the fleet’s centerpiece, they accept their fading role with grace—outshined but never unneeded. For NOAA-15, bearing witness, even in silence, remains enough.
With orbit anew, they whisper: “My instruments are awake. The Earth is below me. She is large and turning. I am ready to begin.”
In the case of inclement weather, the event will be moved to the rain date of June 26. We will add a note to the website by noon on the day of the original event and email all registered participants.
Organized by Taylor Zakarin, Associate Curator of High Line Art
Stay in the loop about future High Line events
We’ll add you to our list to receive the latest High Line news. If it’s not the right fit for you, you may unsubscribe at any time. Already a High Line email subscriber? We’ll keep you in the loop!
Artist bio
Xin Liu (b. 1991, Xinjiang) lives and works in London, United Kingdom. Institutional solo exhibitions include Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2026); Hyundai Artlab (2025); Pioneer Works, New York, New York (2023); Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao, China (2023); M+ Museum, Hong Kong (2021); and Museum of Arts and Design, New York, New York (2020). She is the recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award (2025), K11 Artist Prize (2024), Porsche Chinese Young Artist of the Year (2021), and the X Museum Triennial Award (2020). Liu currently presents in the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Xin Liu is an Onassis ONX Member.
About Onassis ONX
Xin Liu’s ‘NOAA: A fall towards home’ was co-produced by Onassis ONX, the Onassis Foundation’s global platform for art and advanced technologies. As a catalyst for digital cultures, Onassis ONX empowers creatives who build transformative works, elevating their practice across ideation, development, presentation, and distribution through studios in Athens and New York. Such a holistic engagement throughout an artistic process enables world building at the frontiers of AI, immersive, spatial computing, gaming, and other emergent time-based media. Onassis ONX then cultivates and engages with a network of institutions and industries ready to respond to these new forms of creative expression and meaningfully engage with audiences around the world.
Collaborator bios:
Alex Koi is a Brooklyn-based composer and vocalist. She has collaborated with a breadth of musicians and choreographers at venues such as Lincoln Center, the Guggenheim Museum, The Met, Joe’s Pub, MassMoca, Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival, and Public Records, among others. She played the combined role of Tracy Dunn/Jillian Gilchrist in Toshi Reagon’s Off-Broadway production of “Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.” In 2020, she was a featured artist at Joe’s Pub Vanguard Gala honoring Laurie Anderson, curated by Shara Nova, where she performed alongside Meshell Ndegeocello and Morley, amongst others. Her upcoming album “Wake” with cellist Kirin McElwain is anticipated for 2027 release, a co-led project for voice, cello, and modular synthesizer. Her former long term band project Saajtak released their debut album in 2022, as well as five EPs previously. Alex has received institutional support and fellowship opportunities from the Church of Noise, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, YoungArts, Avaloch Farm Music, New Amsterdam Composer Lab, and Bang on A Can.
Kate Siefker is an audio engineer, sound designer, and music maker who creates emotionally driven sound for documentaries, podcasts, video games, installations, and multimedia storytelling. Through Pilot Light Audio, Siefker crafts sonic worlds rooted in connection, reflection, and the human experience. Their collaborators include National Geographic, The Jane Goodall Institute, Lemonada Media, and Hyundai Artlab. Kate is also an internationally toured drummer and is proudly sponsored by TRX Cymbals.
Leah Wilks is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer based out of Brooklyn, originally hailing from North Carolina. She has taught and shared her work in a variety of locations including the American Dance Festival, Elon University, University of Michigan, Ponderosa Tanzland festival, Theater for the New City, and Northern Stage. Leah holds an MFA in Dance from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Montclair State University. As a performer/collaborator they have worked with a variety of dance, theater, music, and interdisciplinary artists including Fifi Zhang, Okwui Okpokwasili, Alexis Blake, Kendra Portier, Anna Barker/Real.Live.People, Tatyana Tennenbaum, Beth Graczyk Productions, and Tommy DeFrantz/SLIPPAGE. Leah has been an artist in residence at MOtiVE Brooklyn, Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bergen Dansesenter, and MacDowell.
Qasim Naqvi is a percussionist, composer, and synthesist. In addition to being the drummer of the lauded cult minimalist trio Dawn of Midi, Naqvi is an accomplished solo artist whose passion for multidisciplinary work has led him into the worlds of film, dance, installation art, and orchestral and chamber music. His concert music has been commissioned and performed by London Contemporary Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Crash Ensemble, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Jennifer Koh, Stargaze, Cello Octet Amsterdam, Helsinki Chamber Choir, among others. Other collaborations include original music for Academy Award–winning documentarian Laura Poitras and Turner Prize–nominated filmmaker and installation artist Naeem Mohaiemen.
Support
Lead support for High Line Art comes from Amanda and Don Mullen. Major support is provided by Shelley Fox Aarons and Philip E. Aarons, The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston and Charina Endowment Fund.
Major support of High Line Art’s digital infrastructure is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Program support for High Line Art is provided by Sarah Arison, Suzanne Deal Booth, Charlotte Ford, Molly Gochman, and Joyce F. Menschel. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund and Shane Akeroyd.
High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council, under the leadership of Speaker Julie Menin.
