FF/REW, 1998, video, 17 min.

The strategic basis of Ene-Liis Semper's work is her psycho-physiological experience seeking expression from her bodily surface. The works spring from this context and are often fragmentary, frequently founded on mere bodily reflexes. These works are not easily verbalised, and are not as a rule subject to descriptions. They are, however, vaguely and distantly discernible, perceptible, comprehensible and recognisable. The video presented in Manifesta 3, FF-REW, is based upon one of the most elementary and fundamental technological characteristics of the video as a medium. As such, it also serves as a commentary on the medium itself. The basis of this work is the capability of video to manipulate time, to break down the linear and narrative structure of events, to continuously change them around, to move both backwards and forwards from the starting point. In doing so, Semper is at the same time the model for her action and the distanced viewer. "I have always been interested in getting ahead of words and consciousness (REW) or getting behind them (FF)", she says. An ironic manner of looking at herself is revealed here in a forced symbolic form through oscillation and an endless reversible chain of theatrically stilted suicides.