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A public inconvenience from Josh Harris |
Search for real person behind a net visionary
WE LIVE IN PUBLIC
Directed by Ondi Timoner
Certificate 15
THIS is a gloriously odd film about a gloriously odd person. Josh Harris was an internet pioneer of the mid-1990s.
He founded Pseudo.com, an internet TV network, the first of its kind, and made a fortune during the dot.com boom of the period.
So what did he do with his fortune? He decided to bankroll a typically New York art happening called Quiet.
Late in 1999, Josh found an underground bunker, wired cameras up all over the place, shoved 100 people inside, gave them everything they needed to live for 30 days and then locked the doors.
His project questioned the balance people need to strike between trading privacy for the recognition people crave, and Josh foresaw the Facebook generation with his understanding of what the internet would soon become.
Things did not go too swimmingly for the entrepreneur turned artist: known for his famously wild parties, Quiet came to an abrupt end when it was busted by the police – guns were being fired (apparently) and there were licensing issues with the project, and other forms of law-breaking.
Another one of his projects consisted of filming himself and his girlfriend’s every move for six months, which understandably didn’t do the relationship much good and eventually led to him having some kind of breakdown.
Josh recovered by becoming an apple farmer and then finding his way to Ethiopia, where he resides today. This film tells his story, and Josh’s life is the kind of topic director Ondi Timoner covers well – namely, trendy New York types. She turned her lens towards rock group rivalry in her 2004 film Dig, which covered the relationship between The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.
This was an altogether larger effort: it took 10 years to get together and she apparently shot 5,000 hours of footage while following Harris.
The result is a watchable and thoughtful discussion of the internet, the idea of 15 minutes of fame, and why people would crave such a thing.
Josh likes to consider himself as a visionary, a genius behind big conceptual art projects. This film left that open to question, though his foresight of what the internet would do to our world was accurate in many ways. |
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