A similar mission guides [Miranda July’s] latest project, “We Think Alone,” where strangers become privy to the private emails of Lena Dunham, Catherine Opie, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kirsten Dunst, Sheila Heti, Etgar Keret, Kate and Laura Mulleavy, Lee Smolin and Danh Vo. In this banal yet confidential space, emails become striking self-portraits.

“A quiet person might !!!! a lot,” she explains on her website. “A person with a busy mind might write almost nothing.”