SINGAPORE — Give him your time of day and he’ll give you something worth your while. Nearly halfway through Give Me Your Blood And I Will Give You Freedom, I’m quite confident that’s what will eventually happen when Indian artist Nikhil Chopra winds down his 50-hour durational performance on Sunday night.

The title is a quote from 20th century Indian freedom fighter Subhas Chandra Bose, who found himself exiled in Singapore right before World War II, where he would recruit soldiers to the anti-colonial cause back in his homeland.

Blood/Freedom is epic in scope but also intimate, a drawn-out experience for both artist and audience at the 72-13 white space, where Chopra draws/paints/traces images on a wall based on video projections (a tropical landscape, planes, tanks....) as he inhabits a few characters (since Friday night, we’ve seen two in a Caucasian woman and an Indian soldier). This while he takes his own sweet time, of course, grabbing lunch or dinner, taking catnaps or sleeping overnight, while still in performance mode.

Indeed, if you wanted to, you could really hang out with him throughout the entire performance (two couples stayed overnight on Friday, sleeping bags and all, even as he slept).

From what I’ve seen of the still ongoing piece, it’s somewhat the opposite of Mystery Magnet — restrained and sombre, slow and meditative, and deeply rooted in history compared to Miet Warlop’s frenetic, colourful and quite ahistorical loopiness.

We’ve had many uber-long shows before at previous Arts Fest editions but none like this durational work in recent years, which is really more performance art than theatre. (Which also means it could be a kind of warm-up refresher course when the homegrown performance art festival Future Of Imagination returns next month, which will focus on two to five-hour long durational performances.)

Mine is an admittedly incomplete experience (darn it, I’ve got work on Sunday!) but I’m already completely sold on this show. I love the slow passage of time, the accumulation of minute, seemingly random actions (offering wine to visitors, cycling around and around the space) along with the obvious activity of painting, and the pivotal “peak moments” as the scenario he literally pictures just builds up. Make no mistake, he’s talking about war, which will all come to a head on Sunday night, when it apparently gets pretty explosive. But war doesn’t just happen, it’s the consequence of a series of events (big and small), which his performance process echoes. Chopra is conducting one huge visual tragic score.

Yes, the very experience itself proves irresistible. Because we’re not actually pressured to stay and sit through it all as you would in most marathon theatre productions, it feels like you *own* your own experience, if you know what I mean. I’ve mostly mainly seen his female character (apparently named Michelle according to the SIFA folks) and even if I really don’t know much about her or why she’s there, I feel deepy invested in her. Chopra rarely acknowledges the audience so I’m a spectral presence to his characters as much as they are to me, as when “Michelle” takes a break and catch a snooze so vulnerably surrounded by the audience. A compact is sort of made between us.

And between me and the space Chopra’s transforming, too, which has, in the time I’ve been inside, been turned into a field of stars, the interiors of some sort of palace, and a lush tropical landscape. The atmosphere is complemented by the sounds of crickets and airplanes flying past, and later on, the sinister sounds of explosions as tanks rumble into view.

While all of this was happening downstairs, upstairs you simultaneously had something else going on. Even as Chopra painstakingly enacted a portrait of a past, SIFA was giving you glimpses of the future, with presentations from next year’s performers. (A bit like The OPEN again?)

This afternoon saw the likes of Drama Box, Cake, T’ang Quartet, Bhaskar’s Arts Academy, Theatre du Reve Experimental Beijing (which’ll be collaborating with LASALLE) and... Kumar. Yes, for SIFA 2015, he’ll be performing along with a few other female comedians under HDB void decks. It’ll be his first time performing in the heartlands and that just sounds really cool. Singapore’s legendary toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan, who’s also part of next year’s line-up, was also slated to perform her second teaser performance after last night’s, where she did a few pieces by John Cage (including the silent 4’33”) and performance artist Allan Kaprow.

Like I said, I’ll unfortunately be unable to drop by tomorrow, but both events are enough reason for you to head done to 72-13. You’ll need tickets for Chopra’s show but the SIFA 2015 previews are free. You’ll have, from 1pm to 6pm, Brian Gothong Tan/Reckless Ericka, Teater Ekamatra, the Beijing group again, Goh Lay Kuan and W!ld Rice.

For more info on Nikhil Chopra’s show and SIFA, visit https://www.sifa.sg/