We Live in Public

Aroview: Armed to the teeth with dot-com millions, mad prophet-cum-performance artist Josh Harris goes off the deep end in this startling account of online entrepreneurship: namely, an experimental ‘party bunker’ whose inhabitants were streamed live on the web, prefiguring ‘Big Brother’ by several years.

All the more staggering as a documentary of events you’ve never heard of, dir. Timoner (DIG!) wrestles with the megalomaniacal Harris while chronicling first-hand the evolution of his radical ‘conceptual art’ projects. While the revelation of sex orgies, communal nudity, and underground firing ranges are outrageous enough, the film also sensationally examines the internet’s development from primitive information highway to powerful, all-consuming Orwellian entity – an insightful short history providing plenty of food for thought regarding the erosion of our privacy, and the advent of the youtube/Facebook generation.

NZ International Film Festival 2009

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