Academic exercises in video

Group exhibitions live and die by juxtaposition. Anyone who’s done any home decorating, or even matched a pair of slacks and socks, knows that some combinations work better than others.

Few pleasures are greater than standing in a gallery that has been installed so that its works not only talk to one another but also sing. Creating call-and-response exchanges among diverse pieces, masterfully juxtaposed shows tease unexpected connections from them. This draws viewers into the drama, which is as exciting (and unpredictable) as a live performance.

Among the many media contemporary artists use to tell their stories, video sticks out like a sore thumb. Requiring a dark room and silence, it’s a stand-alone art form that demands your undivided attention. If it were a preschooler, its report card might read “Doesn’t play well with others.”

Viewers cannot compare and contrast video works without taking a detour through memory. The spine-tingling immediacy of point-by-point pairings is replaced by a more sanguine, often melancholic evocation of the past. It’s no accident that so much contemporary video is about loss. Despite the tough pose the supposedly up-to-the-minute genre often strikes, it’s ripe with misty sentimentality and overwrought self-involvement.

“Elsewhere: Negotiating Difference and Distance in Time-Based Art” is a three-artist exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Organized by graduate student Amy Hood (as part of her work toward a master’s degree in critical and curatorial studies), the diligent show includes a single work that explicitly addresses video’s solitary nature.

Shirin Neshat’s “Rapture” (1999), which was shown four years ago at Santa Monica’s Patrick Painter Gallery and is regularly featured at international art festivals, actually is two videos in one. Neshat, who was born in Qazvin, Iran, and lives in New York, forces viewers to play a fast-paced game of back-and-forth compare-and-contrast that is as mesmerizing as it is open-ended.

On one wall of a large darkened gallery is projected a 12 1/2- minute looped tape that shows a group of about 100 men, all dressed in black slacks and white shirts. They hike to an ancient stone fortress, explore its abandoned ramparts, challenge one another to tests of physical prowess and then stare silently over the seaside battlements as Neshat’s camera scans their expectant faces.

On the opposite wall, a similar number of women, all dressed in dark chadors, wanders through the desert before drawing together in a tight cluster. After staring into the camera for several long minutes, they ululate loudly, collectively emitting a piercing shriek that is strangely melodic. Eventually they disperse; six set out to sea in a large rowboat as the rest of the women and all of the men watch longingly.

Neshat’s synchronized videos create the impression that the segregated groups are acting in unison. Viewers are caught in the cross-fire of the long dreamy scene.

Not only do you have to turn your head continually to keep up with the action, you also know that for everything you see, you’re missing something else. In the end, it’s impossible not to sympathize with both groups of actors, simultaneously identifying with roles traditionally assigned either to men or women.

The videos by the other two artists -- displayed in the darkened corners of another gallery -- follow more standard operating procedures. Mical Rovner’s “Border” (1996-97) is an impressionistic 46-minute tape that the Israeli-born, New York-based artist made as she traveled along a dirt road beside the razor-wire fence between Israel and Lebanon. Her meandering travelogue currently is being shown at UC Riverside in an unrelated exhibition. It previously was screened at Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica and is a staple on the international art circuit.

It has its moments, particularly when Rovner plays the role of a pushy Israeli, putting passersby on the spot by asking them pointed questions about fear, violence and how her movie should end. Shifting awkwardly between self-conscious art film and well-meaning documentary, Rovner’s work circles around the idea that war, for the most part, is boring -- until violence shatters the tedium. Hitting this theme repeatedly, “Border” allows viewers to dip into its narrative at any point and get the main thrust without watching the entire thing.

In contrast, Mona Hatoum’s two videos follow old-fashioned narrative arcs. “Measures of Distance” (1988) is a 15-minute slide show based on letters Hatoum, who lives in London, exchanged with her mother, who never left Beirut despite the civil war that broke out in 1975. The intimacies they share are at once touching and ordinary.

Unfortunately, “Changing Parts” (1984) lacks maturity. A 24-minute shower scene set to a cello suite by Bach, the cliche-ridden piece has the presence of an undergraduate’s unsuccessful attempt to marry Ana Mendieta’s performance art to Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”

A similar sense of jejune preciousness suffuses a concurrent installation by Hatoum at the Museum of Contemporary Art. On the floor in a skylighted gallery, nearly two tons of clear glass marbles have been arranged in the shape of a global map. Stating the obvious -- that borders are arbitrary and that the Earth is fragile -- Hatoum’s “Map” is an instance of institutional gimmickry that adds nothing to fifth-generation conceptual art but the dumbed-down pretense of politics.

As a whole, “Elsewhere” leaves viewers wanting. Never venturing off the well-traveled path of standard gallery fare, it has the presence of an academic obligation, an exercise undertaken by someone more interested in dotting I’s and crossing Ts than in making sparks fly from insightful juxtapositions.

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“Elsewhere: Negotiating Difference and Distance in Time-Based Art” and “Mona Hatoum: Map”

Where: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA campus, Westwood

When: Wednesdays-Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, noon to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Ends: July 27

Price: Free

Contact: (310) 825-4361

Also

What: “Mona Hatoum: Map”

Where: Museum of Contemporary Art 250 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: Tuesdays-Wednesdays and Fridays-Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; closed Mondays

Ends: Aug. 3

Price: $5 to $8; 11 and younger, free

Contact: (213) 626-6222