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For our intervention, Andrea, Chris and I chose to place traditional, folded “Reserved” signs in various seating areas around the High Line. We were investigating the reactions from onlookers – would they engage with the sign by respecting it, removing it, or ignoring it? The signs ask for segregation, creating a space that affirms that someone will sit there, but not you.

In an elevated park among the galleries and high-end shops of the Meatpacking District and Chelsea, the High Line as a public park functions differently from a neighborhood green, Central or Prospect Park. It is a promenade with no fields or courts to encourage game-playing or picnicking. Instead, it functions as a thoroughfare and mezzanine to watch walkers, the buildings surrounding it, the street, or the sun set. Most often, it is a destination for people already in the neighborhood, and for tourists.

What we found was a respect for the sign by onlookers – some observed it as art and took pictures alongside it, quite a few chuckled at it, but the only attempts to remove the sign were from the High Line workers. For them, the signs shouldn’t exist in a public space, or shouldn’t w/o the proper authority behind it.