Is Video Art Really Art? London's Tate Modern certainly seems to think so.

Byline: Tara Pepper

Forget images of scantily clad MTV babes or zealous art students producing grainy films with handheld cameras. A new exhibit at London's Tate Modern--its first to be devoted to video--lays to rest the debate over whether video is truly art. "Time Zones" (through Jan. 5, 2005) features works by 10 international artists, ranging from Fikret Atay's witty "Rebels of the Dance" (2002), set in the far east of Turkey, to Yang Fudong's more cinematic "Liu Lan" (2003) which shows a young man arriving at a lake to meet a woman on a boat. The highlight of the exhibit, it blends exquisite artistry with video's realistic edge.

Indeed, the Tate exhibit shows that video artists are increasingly focused on what's most essential to their art: its ability to capture events in real time. And this has helped them secure a niche in the art world. "Video has moved back to a form of art-making that reveals itself gradually," says curator Gregor Muir. Film has long been regarded as more artistic for its ability to portray light, color and shadow with greater nuance and intensity. But by exploiting its association with newsgathering, video art helps us to digest what we see. "Moving- image work has been gaining increasing prominence," says Irit Rogoff, professor of visual culture at London's Goldsmiths College. "While we are bombarded with images [in everyday life] we are given little insight into how to think about them." New, more widely-available technology means more video is being created than ever. And prices for such works have increased dramatically, in tandem with demand from private collectors and museums.

At first glance, many of the works included in "Time Zones" appear to draw on traditional art forms. Wolfgang Staehle's "Comburg," for instance, a live Webcam picture of an 11th-century monastery in rural Germany, is reminiscent of landscape photography. Fiona Tan's vibrant, colorful "Saint Sebastian" looks like a traditional ethnographic documentary. Portraying ...