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A RELATI ENE-LIIS SEMPER: Estonian artist Ene-Liis Semper's work is a blend of video and performance art that has been influenced by film and theatre. Her video works record performances done specifically for the camera, focusing on the artist herself. In their concentration on the relation between the artist and the image, these video works echo North American video strategies from the 1970s. Semper's works, however, are informed by a sophisticated understanding of the dramatic potential of the image. Her gestures are spare but have a dramatic resonance that is both seductive and unsettling, able to evoke some of the power of Greek myths mixed with the paranoia and uncertainty of contemporary experience. They reflect on the artificiality of media representations, but also their power to inhabit life, addressing classic themes of seduction, male-female relations, self-sacrifice and death. The exhibition will present four works, two on monitors and two as video projections. ff/rew is a black & white video projection that evokes the mis-en-scene of a classical period drama. A young woman (Semper) dressed in a silk slip, sits quietly reading: music from Beethoven's fifth piano concerto adds to the sense of timeless and delicate beauty. The woman rises from the chair, places the book on the table and slowly and deliberately moves to the other side of the table where she proceeds to enact a suicide. One watches as the slow and seemingly inevitable dance with death moves to conclusion, only to find in the next instant that the action reverses, the subject revives and moves again into the simple banal actions of life, moving on to repeat the act again and again. The tape portrays an endless cycle of seduction, self-destruction, and revival only possible in the world of images while the pacing and the visual power of the projected image draws the viewer as a moth to the flame. The piece has the compact intensity of a story by Marguerite Duras. It can be seen in the context of the eternal life of the image and its beauty that outlives death, like a vampire, drawing on the soul of society, and also in the dramatic representation of death which over and over again becomes a caricature of life. This dance of death and revival can also be seen in the context of Baltic experience, the fall of communism and the seductions of the west, along with the region's ongoing struggles with economic survival and hardship. In Come!, the artist skips out of the front of a huge domed Quonset hut and, like a mythical siren, beckons to the viewer to come outside. This energetic child-like gesture is both fascinating and unsettling, inspiring the desire for playfulness and discovery and yet evoking the fear of the unknown. The pace is slowed to accentuate the sense of the surreal, being slightly out of sync with ordinary reality, an experience that only exists in the life of images and in the human imagination. Two other pieces, Oasis and Sleeping Man, are included in the exhibition. Both have a visceral relation to psycho-social experience, the former to nurturing and the latter to gender and power. In their A proud supporter of the arts in your community. focus on the relation between the artist and the camera, all of Semper's works echo earlier video strategies from the 1970s, but these works are informed by a sophisticated understanding of the dramatic potential of the image as well as an Eastern European sensibility and the skepticism of current times. SB* ··IBBBI MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS II L o n g & McQuade Ene-Liis Semper lives in the ancient city of Tallinn, Estonia, where she grew up under the influence of the communist state, learning to speak Russian and English as well as Estonian. She counts 1 July | 1615 L o n s d a l e A v e . P h o n e : 9 8 6 - 0 9 1 1 a n d 8 other l o c a t i o n s in B . C . August