Tonight's program features work that examines complex social, historical, and emotional states. Gene Gort's series Sudden Video is comprised of five short narrative works: Looking Out (1988, 8 mins) combines joke telling and metaphor to examine the media and its role in constructing stories about events. figure/GROUND (1991, 6 mins) is a precise and economical examination of a moment of transformation between a captor and a hostage against a backdrop of political power relations. In Whirl Without End (1996, 4 mins) beautiful fleeting images suggest the effect of trauma on memory. Gort's Window of Opportunity (1998, 5 mins) looks at a crucial moment of (in)decision, while the complex Restless Spirit (2000, 7 mins, All video) expresses daily predicaments amidst loss and decay. James T. Hong's elaborate and bold Behold the Asian: How One Becomes What One Is (1999, 15 mins, B&W, 16mm) uses the conceit of a suicide tape to mount an unnerving rant against consumerism and conformity and to explore Asian identity. Originally an installation, Harun Farocki's I Thought I Was Seeing Convicts (2000, 28 mins, Beta SP) examines both the proliferation of technological devices to monitor and control prisoners, and the specific treatment of prisoners by guards at Corcoran Prison.-Kathy Geritz