All reviewers seem to begin by telling us the circumstances in which they came to watch it: when they first came into the screening room, how long they stayed, what they were doing before they came in and what they did afterwards.
The novelist Zadie Smith—when she went to see it at the Hayward Gallery in 2011, in an essay originally published in The New York Review of Books and later used as the catalogue essay when it was shown at the MCA in Sydney in 2012—says she saw the work the first time around 2 in the afternoon, stayed 45 minutes (she wished she had stayed longer), was looking after her kids before and got back to work afterwards.
The author of a long profile for The New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski, came in around 4.30 in the afternoon during its screening for the Yokohama Triennale in 2012, stayed around three hours and left only reluctantly because the artist was with him and tapped him on the shoulder and said he wanted to go to dinner.
Rex Butler teaches Art History in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University.
