from an email
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073029/
it was fascinating. i thought it was a brilliant critique of modern (capitalist) society where no one has any time for anyone anymore and where the space in which someone is simply acknowledging your presence, without rushing off, in which someone finally has time for you--"she visualizes time in the space she shares with the audience"--comes to have an incredible value. it's gut-wrenching. the aspect of the 'blank slate' was incredibly interesting as well, insofar as it brought to the fore the disconcerting human need to create idols, even gods (the adulatory and downright religious reactions to the performance gave me the chills) and i'd say it could've been the most powerful testimony to that need i've ever seen, if only because it was so sterile (the museum context) and pronounced, both artificial and raw.
theoretically, the question--the difficulty--of presence is remarkably interesting too and it really made me wonder what it would mean for a philosopher to be 'present,' in a very different register of course. what would the equivalent of the bodily presence for the mind be?
the stuff about "she does all of this because she was an unhappy little girl and now she wants to be loved" was admittedly weak, in my view. the erotic aspect and the significance of love in her work were so vivid, they simply shouldn't have commented on that, the words trivialized the matter.
anyway, these are some of my thoughts, haha.