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Artist Plans to Lead Mass Funeral March Along the High Line

By Gwynne Hogan | August 12, 2015 7:35am
 Artist plans funeral like procession to walk along the High Line for Sept. 9.
Artist plans funeral like procession to walk along the High Line for Sept. 9.
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Flickr/PROWasabi Bob

CHELSEA — Michael Nicholas is planning a funeral and he needs your help. 

The 44-year-old Hell's Kitchen artist and composer is organizing a public memorial-as-performance art that will invite participants to walk down the High Line from 34th Street all the way south to Gansevoort Street. 

The event — which he's calling Wake Up 2015 —  begins at 4 p.m. on Wed. Sept. 9 and is open to anyone looking to remember their dearly departed.

"Death is something that we all share," Nicholas said. "Everybody has lost somebody."

He says he has around a hundred people already signed up but he's hoping to bump that number into the thousands.

Participants must wear black, they must walk at a mild pace and have to ruminate about the ones they've lost along the way, according to the artist.

"I just love the High Line, I kind of fell in love with it when I first moved here over a year ago," Nicholas said. "It seemed like a great place to bring people together."

He'd had the seed in his mind of creating some kind of collective performance piece for months, but his ideas kept being too political, he said. Death on the other hand, was universal. 

You can RSVP on his website to partake in the walk.