JANUARY 7-15

This brief survey of a recently established genre starts with a Nam June Paik piece begun in 1965 and concludes with work pulled from the Video Toaster just last year. Featured in these four programs (Jan. 7 & 14, 2:30 p.m.; Jan. 8 & 15, 6 p.m.) are works by conceptual artists, video pranksters, music-video makers, and others. The Jan. 14 program includes the feature-length Wax: The Discovery of Television Among the Bees, David Blair’s eccentric, elusive mating of beekeeping and nuclear-bomb imagery, but most of the pieces are short: Mary Lucier visits Monet’s Giverny, Dara Birnbaum reconstructs The Hollywood Squares, Vito Acconci offers a confrontational monologue, Hal Hartley mails a video postcard of New York, Cheryl Donegan eats a sandwich, Y. David Chung and Matt Dibble portray a Korean-American merchant (Turtle Boat Head, pictured), and Laurie Anderson cuts down (and up) Carmen to 13 minutes. At the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, 4th & Constitution NW. (202) 737-4215. (Mark Jenkins)