Marina Abramovic| The Artist Is Present

I visited the MOMA on Thursday March 18th, 2010. I have never been to the MOMA before, and was pleasantly surprised. I went to attend the Marina Abramovic : The Artist is Present exhibition. On the first floor of the MOMA, was her live performance, which i was not expecting. The artist herself was seated at a table, in a taped off section, where audience members were invited to join her at the table and sit for aslong as they wished. I was unaware at the time that the person sitting at the table, was an audience member and not a performer. Abramovic will perform this piece, everyday untill the exhibition ends, all the while it being videotaped with a live video stream.
After experiencing the 6th floor retrospective of her work, i found that "New Media" was not used directly in her work, but more for documentation purposes. The use of video in presenting, previously performed works was effective in showing the viewers her older work. However, i do feel that the first hand experience of some of the pieces is lost when being viewed through a video camera. Technically they were presented well, some on televisions and some projected onto the wall. The first room you entered had a lot of noise and a few videos projected on to the walls, which was slightly overwhelming. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.
As for the entire retrospective I was much more interested in her live performers that were reenacting her older performances. Before visiting the show, i was unaware that the performers attended a trainging session to prepare, because they would be doing this for 7 hours a day for three months and it can be physically draining on a person. After seeing the Marina Abramovic: The artist is Present, I have a new found respect for performance artists.