Malaysian artist Azizan Paiman tells me that to lose weight, all I have to do is make sure that the calories I expend are more than the calories I consume. I already know that, but he's done it, and I haven't. He also tells the small group assembled in his temporary cafe that we need to love each other, no matter what belief system people have. Again yes, agreed, but also something easier said than done.
Paiman's performance piece is a work in the Singapore Biennale 2016: Atlas of Mirrors. Being Singapore, a place with a more established tourist industry than Japan, I shared the cafe with an Indonesian Muslim, two South Koreans, an ex-Catholic Irish woman and an atheist Brit. I wouldn't go as far as saying that love was all around, but the exchanges were friendly, engaging and open.
As an experience overall, "Atlas of Mirrors" could also be described as such. But it was also surprising that, given Singapore's reputation as a buttoned-up technocracy, it was aggressively critical at times and ready to go where other art big events in Asia may fear to tread.