The video on display is “dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y,” Grimonprez’s previous work that also deals with airplane hijacking. In this video, like in the magazine, he describes various airplane hijacking incidents. However, this presentation is more effective than the written version because of his sarcastically patronizing voice-over, reminiscent of an airline safety video. The sound effects and background music on this video are so maudlin that they drown out the screams and explosions of horrifying events. Just imagine Air Force One, minus the heroics, plus a lot of gore and the fact that it really happened.

The next two exhibitions are video pieces composed by Isaac Julien, a London-based filmmaker who has spent most of the 90s working on film-based installations. His newest piece, “Vagabondia,” is similar to “Inflight” because the artwork in itself has a lot to do with its atmosphere. While walking to the viewing site, you pass through a small hallway that is lined with black egg-crate padding. In front, a subdued red light and mellow chimes entice you to enter. And once inside, the double screen film installation seduces you to stay.

While the atmosphere is powerful, the video keeps you hooked. The amazing video work takes advantage of the double-screen, converging and diverging on specific images to show a dazzling array of hypnotic designs. Colors like bronze, gold, silver and marble create an almost surreal on-screen ambiance. The museum from which the film was recorded was built to resemble a ruin, which distorts the perception of time and space. Add to all this that the subtle time-lapse video recording, in which an image on one screen lags behind the same one on the other, and you feel like you are in a daze.

In “The Long Road to Maztlan,” Julien uses similar elements—such as color, space and time—to tell a modern cowboy tale. Using a three-screen projection rather than two, Julien explores the contradictory elements of cowboys; their masculinity and eroticism, their freedom to roam yet restrained emotions and their frontier mentality. Cowboys dance randomly from screen to screen, then simply stare, then start swimming nude, then dance again—this cycle continues. The cyclical features of both the cowboys and their backdrop distort the perceptions of freedom and wild exploration that are naturally attached to these “frontiersmen.”

Similar to that of “Vagabondia” (2001), this earlier “The Long Road to Maztlan” (1999) uses vivid colors and distinctive hues in the face and skin to emphasize human vulnerability. Each screen, while seamlessly in contact with each other, emphasizes different shades of the same face. This makes for a powerful perspective change, as characters dancing from screen to screen are seen from a different light whenever they change screens.

Elements of homoeroticism, sexuality and manliness are intensely incorporated in the characters. Venezuelan-born Javier De Frutos choreographed their strange, almost spasmodic dancing. The final piece in the exhibit, Paul Pfeiffer’s “The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle),” is the second work of a trilogy based on Muhammad Ali’s most famous bouts. In “The Long Count (Rumble in the Jungle),” Pfeiffer presents Ali’s eighth round knockout of George Foreman in a 1974 Zaire fight. This piece is innovative because the boxers’ muscled figures are digitally removed, leaving only the shadows and faint clear spectres of the boxers left in the ring. This leaves the viewer with a tantalizing view of the audience’s reaction, and the influence this boxing match had on the world.

Pfieffer’s sculpture excavates implications of this fight that younger viewers probably do not understand. Ali, the handsome, smug boxer who epitomized the multimillionaire sports figure, opposed America’s colonial involvement in Vietnam. This fight took place in Zaire, where opposition to the country’s own colonialism was overwhelming. Traces of Vietnam, racism, Black Power and colonialism are all evident in this short, repeating one round video. The display, a no larger than eight-inch screen perched away from a wall, does not even have sound. Without anything to listen to, this miniscule view of boxing allows you to step back and see everything in perspective.