NYC Wisdom

Alicia Mersy’s practice includes photography, video, installation, and spiritual exploration. She uses the camera as a conduit for understanding others—strangers, friends, and loved ones—while creating space for conversation, collaboration, and education. Mersy examines repressive social and political structures, self-representation, and technology as a means to forge new pathways of understanding between unlikely parties. In this vein, her work becomes a locus for healing and personal and collective peace, where free spirits, radicals, revolutionaries, artists, and the audience come together to build solidarity and understanding.

For the High Line’s third High Line Originals commission, Alicia Mersy presents NYC Wisdom (2024). Born out of her video practice, in which the camera becomes a catalyst for interpersonal connection, NYC Wisdom began as Mersy started to spontaneously film “wisdom” she encountered around the city—building relationships with and interviewing construction workers, subway performers, halal food truck owners, knitters in the park, and characters on the street. NYC Wisdom ties together years of this footage, as the subjects share what brings them happiness, positivity, and energy.

In NYC Wisdom, Mersy’s role as seeker is replaced with an animated butterfly drone that soars between buildings and down avenues, searching for these “teachers” as the artist affectionately calls them, or “high vibration individuals,” as one subject of the film suggests. The viewer takes on the POV of the butterfly, and of Mersy, scanning the city and its inhabitants through a vibrant purple viewfinder to detect and locate salient moments of street wisdom. The shaky, handheld nature of the footage following subjects as they walk, the close-cropped shots of their hands, and the occasional presence of the artist’s voice from behind the camera all reinforce the sense that we, as viewers, are along for the ride. As we continue to receive these teachings, our butterfly avatar gains energy, indicated by a “health bar” — a tool often used in video games to indicate the amount of life or energy one has remaining. In these game environments, the health bar can be impacted positively or negatively based on your actions and interactions. By adopting this concept, and applying it to our real-world interactions, Mersy offers a poignant reflection on collective healing, self-actualization, and what it means to survive and thrive in New York City. When the health bar hits 100 and evening falls, the butterfly spreads the particles of wisdom it has gathered across the city. As the film closes, New York’s illuminated skyline becomes overpowered with neon purple streaming from the skyscrapers — demonstrating the contagious energy that comes from forging connection and community, uplifting others, and being lifted up.

NYC Wisdom is the third High Line Originals commission.

Part of High Line Channel, High Line Originals is High Line Art’s commissioning program for video work. Every two years, High Line Art commissions one artist or collaborative to produce a new work of video art to premiere on Channel. High Line Originals launched in 2019 with Tourmaline’s Salacia, followed two years later by Onyeka Igwe’s The Miracle on George Green.

Organized by Taylor Zakarin, Associate Curator, High Line Art

On September 10 at 6:30pm, the global premiere of NYC Wisdom took place, followed by a conversation between the artist and Ali Rosa-Salas, Vice President of Visual and Performing Arts for Abrons Arts Center/Henry Street Settlement.

See the blog post: ART WITH A VIEW: Alicia Mersy, NYC Wisdom