Alison Nguyen '23 Unearths 'Prior Occupants' on the High Line

Commissioned by the High Line and the CHANEL Culture Fund, Prior Occupants by Visual Arts alum Alison Nguyen '23 will premiere September 8, 2026, as the fifth High Line Originals film and the second High Line Originals co-commissioned with the CHANEL Culture Fund.

High Line Originals, the High Line's commissioning program for artists working in time-based media, invites emerging U.S.-based artists, nominated by a trusted group of contemporary curators, to propose a new video work that considers the context of the park. Nguyen, whose work brings personal histories into contact with broader historical forces, chose to focus on oft-overlooked history that has shaped the popular tourist destination. 

"Rather than focusing on the High Line itself, Nguyen turns her attention to the nearby Westbeth Artist Housing, a former Bell Laboratories complex where talking movies, television, and other technological breakthroughs were developed and where part of the Manhattan Project's research for the atomic was once conducted," wrote Daniel Cassady for ARTnews. "In 1970, it was converted into affordable artist housing, whose notable past tenants have included Robert De Niro Sr. and Diane Arbus."

Collaging archival audiovisual material, interviews with residents, and choreographed performance sequences, Prior Occupants repositions the High Line from a site of leisure to a conduit of historical consciousness. Nguyen asks: What does it mean to stage the decay of an industrial past within public environments and within public artist housing? How do the structures of the past shape our individual and collective futures?

A visual artist and filmmaker working across installation, video, and sculpture, Nguyen has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, among others. She has received residencies and fellowships from institutions such as Pioneer Works, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Wave Farm, and the Institute for Electronic Arts. In 2018, Nguyen was named one of Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film." Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Frieze, e-flux, and The Brooklyn Rail, among others. She is exhibiting in the 2026 Busan Biennale, opening later this August.

Prior Occupants will be screening September 8–November 16, 2026, daily from 10 am to 10 pm on the High Line at 14th Street.