Marina Abramovic

On Thursday I went to see a documentary called Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. It was the film I'd been looking forward to the most, and I found it a little underwhelming. Too high expectations I guess. Marina Abramovic is an incredible person and artist, and listening to her talk and just watching her face was great. The film focused mostly on her work The Artist is Present and therein lies my disappointment I think. I would love to have seen it for myself at MOMA, sure, but there are only so many montages of people crying and gallery-goers filmed with time-lapse that you can handle. I think the film would have really benefited from a more rigorous edit. I did enjoy it, but I wish it had delved more into the politics of performance art, and spent more time looking at other pieces in Marina's vast body of work. Her interactions with Ulay were pretty cute though.