[Post exam chill out]
The girls Ramona and Eunice had earlier asked me to join them for steak at Aston's at The Cathay. I had to give it a miss as my jog at Hougang Stadium was delayed as a certain school was having their sports day.

I had planned to join them for tea in the afternoon and they suggested watching Taken instead. I'm not going to give a full review of Taken here but will aim to summarise my thoughts on the movie.

Apart from the stellar cast, I immediately recalled the name at the start of the film credits - Luc Besson. He wrote and produced the movie. I met Luc Besson in Singapore in 2005 during the 117th IOC Session in Singapore. He was in town to as part of the team for the 2012 Olympic Games. It was a close encounter and the IOC Session was a memorable experience for me.

Essentially, the movie has two overlying struggles - familial relationships and money over life. I loved Liam Neeson's action sequences and his desire to save his daughter who had been kidnapped and engulfed in the activities of an overseas triad. Passionate but not as touching as other love stories I have watched.

Dinner was at a friend's place and before that, Eunice and I went over the the Singapore Art Museum to catch the exhibition on Wu Guanzhong, This is Not a Print! and At Home Abroad. The latter is an exhibition by five Singapore artists, one of which is Ming Wong who is presenting works at this year's Venice Biennale.



Indeed it is Ming's work on social prejudice that triggered several thoughts. Angst Essen/Eat Fear is a story of a German cleaning woman and a Moroccan car mechanic who is a migrant of Moroccan origin. The artist plays every single role in the film and speaks in German as well. I think it is through "fitting into" the role that allows him to bring out the different social prejudice emotions in the film. His version is created based on the original 1974 film titled Angst Essen Seele auf (Fear Eats The Soul) by German director Rainer Fassbinder. Interestingly, this fear also ties in with the time period that Ming produced the film - during times of heightened xenophobia in Germany.







I felt that Zulkifle Mahmod's soundscape, False Securities, has parallels to Boo Junfeng's Bedok Jetty which was shown as part of the National Museum's Digital Homelands project.

The other works did not strike much thoughts.