‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ / NYC SCREENING w ONDI TIMONER / WED FEB 13 – 5 PM
in celebration of its . . 10th Anniversary !!
‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ . . . the 2009 Sundance winning documentary,
which tells the story of web entrepreneur, social media visionary, artist / in the sense that Andy Warhol was, in the greater picture, & very outrageous master of ceremonies . . . JOSH HARRIS.
along with his very merry band of wild crazy artists !!
screens . . .
tomorrow Wed Feb 13, 2019 . .
at The Roxy Hotel, in Tribeca, NYC / a location just blocks from the original downtown ‘bunker’ !!
The Roxy Cinema, 2 Avenue of the Americas / cellar level of the Roxy Hotel.
DIRECTOR ONDI TIMONER . . . will be on hand to do a Q & A, MELISSA GIRA GRANT will be moderating.
GET TIX, here: ROXY CINEMA – WE LIVE IN PUBLIC
JOSH HARRIS . . . as the bunker, or pod hotel / for the 99+ in-house resident artists was being constructed.
it was designed & built by JEFF GOMPERTZ. it was totally wired and each pod had a screen and controls.
Josh is wearing the ‘standard’ issue / in-house crew work uniform.
actually a huge party celebrating the 2000 millennium, which Josh termed: ‘QUIET’- in a most contrarian way.
it was open 24/7 to the public, with open bars (of course) & it was a madhouse, so yeah !!
it was actually, really necessary for the ‘production’ crew – to be set apart.
the communal dining room – for the 99+ resident artist & guests !!
the party, (parties !!), and art installations . . took place in a huge 4 store / empty textile warehouse on Broadway, downtown in Tribeca, corner of . . . I wanna say, Leonard St.
but Josh also rented the empty storefront right next door, I think it used to be a Civil War era photographer’s studio ?
this inflatable, ‘bubble’ dining room ,was definitely, a showstopper.
Josh commissioned MARIA ALEJANDRA GIUDICI to make it, and damn, she did . . a great job.
Maria, and her then-husband, MARIANO AIRALDI, also built and designed the notorious transparent communal shower.
you can imagine among that group, there were . . quite a few, characters, and true-to-life, exhibitionists !!
a kid we called, ‘Cowboy’ – was one.
okay, not to break the ‘spell’
spoiler alert: there were actually a couple of standard private bathrooms, in the basement / but, as for the shower ?
just the transparent communal one. lucky the building had been a textile warehouse, and there were lots of scraps and rolls of fabric lying around, so my solution . . was to shower under a fleece ‘cape’.
because, yes !!
there were omni-present cameras – filming all the time & the footage was screened real-time /
you could be eating dinner, and there’d be somebody, or more likely somebodies (!!) naked in the shower, carrying on, carefree as a bird / on the dining room monitors.
it wasn’t called . . ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ – for no reason.
& Ondi was actually there, in charge of all the footage.
did we mention: The Interrogation Room’ ? the zombies, and the techies.
screenshot: NANCY SMITH, in the ‘WE LIVE IN PUBLIC’ trailer.
if you notice the ‘gypsy-like’ life-force . . caught in melt-down, a classic hard-core NYC artist, in the green & yellow puffer jacket, that would be . . me.
of course, there were all kinds of ways, ‘living in public’ – could affect you, could become / ‘living in hell’.
esp when the only rule was: you couldn’t leave !!
there was nothing in place to restrain you, but: if you left, you couldn’t come back.
that was cause enough.
and if you were looking for a mayor, Josh was not . . he.
he was too busy judging live sex contests. and I was supposed to be doing a ‘quilting bee’ — ha ha ha ha.
I mean, someone else was tending a Zen garden, (RIP) Mark Enger of Exploding Sky was silk screening. it wasn’t all neon red light, and war zones, for sure. that was what was so interesting, and talent, really, talent in the end . . was what counted, incl entertainment talent, or as the straight-laced art world calls it . . performance art.
someone was growing a Zen garden, ALEX ARCADIA had goldfish swimming in a moat of water, around a life-size Zen temple (to Arcadia, btw, not to the ‘gods’.)
(RIP) MARK ENGER, of EXPLODING SKY, another cowboy, was silk-screening concentric circle ‘targets’ . . onto crew members’ work shirts.
it was a self-contained artificial world, no windows, no sunlight. things got unreal.
it was much like a spaceship, except instead of astronauts . . it was filled with knock-down artists, with nothing to lose, & (plenty of Pseudo big bucks $$$ to gain) / hardcore all-day, all-night partiers / extreme video gamers, full-on goths & not to forget, Alfredo’s full-fledged shooting gallery, with assault rifles for all (for real), in the sub-basement.
things got unreal, things got hyper, people got un-hinged.
(not to forget, the professional ‘sex workers’, Josh seeded the place with.)
forget getting naked on camera, in my case it was my my life that un-raveled before the all-seeing cameras. and I guess, imprinted into history, now.
I got provoked, taunted, in a way nasty way, and in that 24/7 hyper-speed world, I responded quite singularly.
I got . . into a fight. knocked the dumb, groupie art chick ‘art dealer’ – out with one punch.
I almost killed her, (for real). the cameras didn’t catch the action, Ondie was cursing over that / it was an obscure corner where we made ourselves coffee, but the story-line runs through-out.
lucky I didn’t kill the dumb chick, I mean, how was I to know – she was sitting on flimsy plastic 99 cent store chair, and it rocked over backwards, with a hard thwack on the old concrete floor / with just one impassioned punch to her neck. who’d I ever hit before, anyways ? ok. maybe Rene Ricard, back in the Fun gallery days. slammed a door on his face. he deserved it.
hey, don’t come into the kitchen – if you can’t take the HEAT !!!!!
I was pretty upset as it was. and I was supposed to be one of the ‘grown-ups’ at the party !!
the folk art / historian . . ‘quilt lady’.
but imagine, if that little lady, we call luck – wasn’t with me, I’d prob be in prison, and prob so would Josh.
I mean, there was a ‘toxic waste’ installation (for real), right next to the 99 sleeping pods, which could have blown up at any moment, and how many people in there – knew that ?
that was also – a big part of it.
just how willing people were to put themselves – ‘online’, in public / with no knowledge of whose watching / or who the other players are, & just what . . hidden forces could be at work.
not to mention, apparently . . . nothing fades away / on the web.