Artist in Person Tony Oursler's early works had that ickiness a child feels when confronted by unfathomed bodily desires. Within makeshift neo-expressionist sets, polymorphic props lead their perverse lives, wiggling in puerile delight. Evol (1984, 29 mins), a classic of erotic delirium, is a nocturnal coming-of-age story where a young man reckons with the naked truth of adulthood. In Joyride » (1988, 14:23 mins), Oursler guides us through an amusement park in which leisure is thinly disguised social control. Co-written with Constance DeJong, the tape is at once sarcastic and cautionary. In this (cardboard) carnival of tomorrow, hi-tech thrills are delivered with the precision of a computer. Again collaborating, this time with Joe Gibbons, Oursler leaves the surreality of his pasteboard sets for the larger hallucination of the real world in Onourown (1990, 46 mins). This Hi-8 tape follows two loonies, Joe and Tony, after budget cuts expel them from the asylum. Hilarious in its execution, yet strikingly perceptive, this saga of questioned normality has its two mental cases at constant odds with the surrounding culture. In one astounding sequence, a video therapist (played for every sinister nuance by Tony Conrad) doles out his healing nods on multiple monitors for the mass mania. Shot with leering intimacy, Onourown somehow blurs the actors and their image. This is method media. --Steve Seid