SXSW Film Review: We Live in Public

When web savant Josh Harris went off the grid, he went way off – first to a rural apple orchard, then to sub-Saharan Africa with zero wireless capabilities – but when he was on the grid, he was a prince of the Internet, mixing business savvy, soothsaying, and Factory-like art projects that mashed Big Brother, performance art, Salò, and pre-Guantanamo interrogation techniques. Director Ondi Timonder (DIG!), a longtime friend and chronicler of Harris’ many schemes, ably contextualizes the dotcom boom that bred the astonishing ascent of Harris, who founded in 1993 Pseudo.com, one of the first sites to embrace live webcast technology. But things got really interesting when Harris cashed out and turned his attention, and wallet, to a series of art projects/human nature experiments, including “Quiet: We Live in Public,” in which 100 artists hunkered down in a bunker in the waning days of the millennia and had their every moment and movement caught on camera, from toilet to shower and on-site gun range back to bed, and bedtime couplings. It’s no shock that everybody went a little nuts in the process, but then mass breakdown does make for wildly watchable stuff.

Tuesday, March 17, 4:30pm, ACC; Wednesday, March 18, 11:30am, Paramount