Nathan Fielder Is a Performance Artist in Disguise
“You Can See Everything” is toted as a documentary, but is Fielder a performance artist playing a documentarian?
Art historian struggles to draw parallels between everyday life and history, realizing that art often imitates life. While watching Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's You Can See Everything, the reporter compares Fielder's prolonged eye contact with convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes to Marina Abramović's The Artist is Present (2010).
This leads to the question of whether Fielder is a documentarian or a performance artist playing one. Performance art often involves an intervention that takes place in real time, with the artist's body at the center of the action. Fielder himself becomes part of the experiment, spending 34 days filming and questioning Holmes, her partner Billy Evans, and their children.
Fielder's proximity to the family shapes the behavior he records, leading to a silent intimacy that the film neither confirms nor denies. The title of the film shifts from promise of transparency to provocation, as the audience questions who is watching who and what each person wants to be seen.
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