Kris Lemsalu Malone and Kyp Malone Lemsalu will perform on the High Line this week (photo by Eric Martin)
Who: Kris Lemsalu, Kyp Malone, others
What: Live performance in seven parts
Where: The High Line, between Fourteenth & Thirtieth Sts.
When: September 13-15, free, 6:30
Why: For the 2017 Performa Biennial, Estonian multidisciplinary artist Kris Lemsalu and New York–based musician and artist Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio, Rain Machine) collaborated on Going, Going, which took place on a kinetic bed. In February 2020, they collaborated on the exhibition “Love Song Sing-Along” at KW Institute for Contemporary Art. The two are teaming up again for A Snail’s Tale, a seven-part site-specific performance installation that runs the length of the High Line, from Fourteenth St. to the Thirtieth St. Spur.
Admission is free and no advance RSVP is necessary; the audience will walk across the gorgeous park, making seven stops, each offering a chapter in the story, featuring musicians Lara Allen, Kate Farstad, Forrest Gillespie, Andi Maghenheimer, and Katy Pinke as well as Lemsalu and Malone, in celestial costumes designed by Malone, and joined by a mobile snail shell fabricated by Tarvo Porroson. “A Snail’s Tale is a never-before-heard fairy tale,” High Line Art associate curator Melanie Kress said in a statement. “Kris Lemsalu and Kyp Malone’s phantasmagorical performance is an invitation to slow down and connect to the natural world during this moment of global instability and transition.” Along the way, you will also encounter the current High Line exhibition “The Musical Brain,” consisting of pieces by Rebecca Belmore and Osvaldo Yero, Vivian Caccuri, Raúl de Nieves, Guillermo Galindo, David Horvitz, Mai-Thu Perret, Naama Tsabar, and Antonio Vega Macotela, in addition to commissions by Ibrahim Mahama, Hannah Levy, and Sam Durant.