How would you feel if everyone could watch you all the time? 10 years ago everyone thought it was a crazy idea. Today – we are all doing it.
Last week my Swedish friend Katarina asked me if I wanted to join her to see a documentary she was a part of almost 10 years ago. She’d totally forgotten about it, until MoMa contacted her about a screening they called “We Live in Public”.
The movie is directed by Ondi Timoner featuring Josh Harris‘ life as a genius Internet guru who became a millionaire in the 90s with his company PSEUDO. Harris loved to experiment and predicted that in the future all of us would “live in public”. We would share our lives in this new thing called “the Internet”. That’s why he in 1999 made a huge SoHo building into a living area where he placed 110 cameras and about 100 people for one month. Everything was recorded. He provided food and fun – and even guns. Everything was free – but all the footage (5000 hours) he owned – forever!
My friend Katarina Andersson was living in the house, but she had no idea at that point, what she was a part of. All she can remember was that it was the best party of her life. I asked her some questions after the screening last night:
The movie won The Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Filmfestival this year. After the screening Josh Harris reveled that his next project is “the wired city”. He will record a whole city – and what better place
to do that than LA.
Director Ondi Timoner reveals that she knew in 2006, after the Facebook revolution, that the time had come to make the documentary.
One of the guys who went crazy in the Capsule Hotel was this guy from Holland. He was there last night
and was’t a even a tiny bit more sane than 10 years ago. When he started claiming that 9/11 was a scam – someone decided to grab the mic.
We Live in Public, Capsule Hotel. NYC 1999. People were watching each other from the screens that were placed all over the place. They were having sex, going to the bathroom, showering – and they even got interrogated about their personal life – all in PUBLIC:
Josh Harris predicted that it would all happen – that we would all live in public – that we would all be slaves to the machines. Something to think about next time you update your Twitter status and post your holiday photos on Facebook. You don’t own it anymore – THEY do. And they can do whatever they want with it…
The cast and crew outside MoMa last night (Sunday 5th of April): Harris in white pants and the dierctor in silver skirt.
By: Kjersti
Kjersti@inewyork.no
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