PICK OF THE WEEK:: From our November/December issue: Lee Wen on Jason Lim

I began to call Jason Lim “the last samurai” after an impressive rendition of his performance piece Last Drop (2005) at “Vital 07: The Essence of Performance,” a live art festival held in Manchester in 2007. His cool, focused concentration was something I’d never seen in him before and it was quite extraordinary. Amazingly, it was also during a phase when he was going through an accumulation of troubled relationships, their effects rippling out into other areas of his life and pushing him close to self-destruction. In spite of the internal turmoil, and in contrast to earlier works, this new performance showed such calmness and focus, as if he were seeking a release from the chaos, and perhaps also a miraculous balance.

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