Screen Gems

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Video art has been around for 40 years, since the invention of the portable camera, but it never got (and sometimes didn't deserve) very much respect. But that's changing. Technological advances have made editing easier and large-scale gallery projection possible, and artists have stepped forward with work of indisputable power. In fact, film and video art feature in every submission short-listed for this year's Turner Prize, the British art world's most prestigious award, presented last week (the works are on exhibit at Tate Britain in London until Dec. 23). And a show at Tate Modern on London's South Bank, "Time Zones: Recent Film and Video" (through Jan. 2.), draws from the best international artists, all exploring the concept of time.

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In Untitled (Bangkok), Serb Bojan Sarcevic walks the alleys of the Thai capital, showing that the journey, not the arrival, matters. In Indonesia-born Fiona Tan's Rain, two blue plastic buckets never quite get filled by a monsoon. It's a symbol of futility, like emptying the sea with a cup, yet a soothing, contemplative one. Equally calm but with a sinister undertone is Albanian Anri Sala's Blindfold. Blank billboards on Vlorė and Tirana roofs reflect the rising sun into the viewer's eyes, people hurry by on the street, and after a long stillness, a pallid hand emerges from a balcony, hangs out a towel, and quickly withdraws.

The works are isolated in dimmed rooms or scattered around a large space. As you thread through a cryptlike corridor, the revving motors and shouts of Israeli Yael Bartana's Kings of the Hill hit you before the work itself: it's a record of teenagers racing old cars up and down Tel Aviv sand dunes well into the night. At times it's almost abstract, with headlights filling the screen and engines roaring. You could read some political message into the struggling cars, as you could into Turk Fikret Atay's Rebels of the Dance, which shows two boys dancing and singing Kurdish folk songs in an ATM booth—or you could just enjoy the boys' exuberance.

All the short-listed Turner Prize works are turbulent and politically engaged. In Lagos-based Yinka Shonibare's Un Ballo in Maschera, elegant dancers in bright 18th century costumes re-enact a historical regicide to a soundtrack of their own shuffling feet. In The House of Osama bin Laden, Brits Langlands & Bell let you wander through a computer simulation of bin Laden's stark, empty Afghanistan home—war has moved elsewhere, so the piece toys with virtual reality's usual role as the background for a shoot 'em-up.

Whether you want to look for parallels between past and present, ask "But is it art?" or pass the time checking out works with a dynamic beauty, there's something at the Tates to grab everyone. tel: (44-20) 7887 8888; www.tate.org.uk