Today's video works share one common factor, their utter indifference to traditional narrative structure. Undermining the text, refracting the story through time, or just combining disparate elements makes them newfangled in the best of ways. The difficulty of telling a story seems to be in the telling of Labat's Mayami: Between Cut and Action. Perhaps a drug deal has transpired. And perhaps someone has been killed. This is all speculation in a work that resists comfortable closure. A gripping repertoire of images-a pantomimed tragedy, shards of "Miami Vice," an allegorical lesson-moves forward, halting, abusive and stunning in detail. But what emerges most strikingly from Mayami is the intransigent noise factor that garbles any communication. Part Three of the Damnation of Faust, Birnbaum's Charming Landscape registers its plaintive narrative through tones of emotion. The trilogy concerns a loss of innocence in a world both visually hellish and balletically graceful. Here, rioting, shown in slow motion, becomes a dance of defiance and submission. The final image of a gloved hand enveloping the camera speaks of Faust's irretrievable soul. The atmosphere is thick with Oedipal feelings in Kobland's Gustave Flaubert Dreams of Travel. Free of dialogue, but laden with an intricate soundtrack, this work describes the static emotional life of one much distracted by his mother. A claustrophobic apartment is assembled through waves of disturbingly framed images. What transpires is minimal in activity, but utterly morbid in its imaginings. The Oedipal complex figures heavily in the Yonemotos' Kappa, but here there's a certain jocularity of treatment. A semi-documentary sequence introduces the Kappa, a mischievous imp from Japanese folklore. His sexual appetite and penchant for maidens is then juxtaposed with a contemporary Jocasta's seduction of her young son, Eddie. Layers of mediated imagery, varied scenery and stylized sets suggest that these id-inspired emotions exist throughout history and culture. -Steve Seid