Because of its strange mix of apparent tradition and innate modernity, Japan holds great allure for artists, such as Chris Marker and Wim Wenders, who find challenge in testing the surface tensions of culture. Facing the East yet never turning its back on the West, Japan perplexes as much as it pleases, withholds in the act of revealing. The Fourth Dimension, Trinh T. Minh-ha's newest essayistic work and her first videotape, cuts an intricate key for unlocking this elusive culture. Her tack finds great visual pleasure in the everyday, composing and decomposing the social landscape, while constructing a poetic grid of temporalities, symbolic meanings, and ritual. Time is essential-the time of the video frame, the time of the ritualized past, the time of culture speeding toward its consummation. Momentous details-from the dew on a lotus leaf to the perfection of the shoji screen, from sensual calligraphic strokes to the monumental floats in a street parade-conjoin the ceremonial to the everyday, fostering subtle oscillations of meaning. This cultural pulse is further amplified through the ubiquitous tempo of the clacking train and the ritual drum. In The Fourth Dimension, Trinh's lyrical narration guides us through "Japan's likeness," the perfected framing of the sacramental familiar.-Steve Seid