Can we be alone together? Artist Jo Meisner asks

The Sydney art community recently celebrated the opening of Jo Meisner‘s new serial photographic installation “Alone Together”, commissioned for Tyro’s new office space.

“Multiple human figures from the contemporary urbanscape are captured, trapped and displayed as if they were specimens. Presented as cut-out silhouettes, these suggestively blank forms are at once familiar and distant. Always portrayed from the rear, thus lending an uneasy sense of observation the figures are unaware of their capture, absorbed by their communication devices,” art critic Lisa Sharp at the Vernissage said.

“Their presentation, as generic tropes entombed within radiantly coloured monochromatic sheets is a curious visual inversion of the sample within the glass. It is a perspective that enables the work to combine commentary with documentation of recent profound social changes in human interaction.”

Suspended upon brightly lit white office walls and becoming alive with the occasional air flow or movements, the big, colourful and preoccupied people encircle the Tyro Agora. This agora is the central square in the Tyro world of open office space spread over five floors, where the Tyros gather to relax, consult their devices, debate and enjoy the moment.

It is very befitting considering the Tyro culture of openness and transparency, of humanity in a technology world.

Can we be alone together? Whether on a train, at a bus stop, commuting to work, walking, we move as Jo Meisner observes, with “heads looking downward, not outward.” Yet while we may appear alienated, isolated and alone, are we in fact more connected, enabled and together than ever before?