Tony Labat charts the pilgrim's progress. Hisvideotapes share the discomfort of an uprooted traveler speaking through a foreign tongue. But it is thisalien status that gives Labat an unblinking, derisive eye. What he sees is a culture of colonial mediationwhere language, gender and ritual covertly shape the subjects. In Labat's newest work, A Jar Full of Jam,this alienated cultural process permeates both structure and theme. While staging a play about a younggirl's social inculcation, he displays every manner of estranged production: scenes are disrupted,directorial orders infiltrate the action, compositional strategies shift. More importantly, the cast ofnon-actors anxiously await the infusion of motive and meaning. They are emptied subjects, conduits forgender and language, struggling with their "parts" yet always succumbing to the imposed roles. UnderLabat's direction, the innocent story of a teenager's awakening becomes a sabotage of acculturation. Andthe audience, able to recognize itself in the actors, witnesses in the passive acquisition of meaning the veryformation of spectatorship. In Branda Miller's ?What's Up? a group of disenfranchised students are givenvideo equipment, the tools of production, and the opportunity to generate their own identity. Thus equipped,they render their varied fantasies, propelling themselves into the empowering realm of self-mediation.Steve Seid