Jannis Kounellis has always cherished a fond memory -I would even call it a veneration- of ''those Greek mothers who, rather than bringing up their children to stay by their sides, prepared them to leave home.'' But of course these adventures come to an end sooner or later with the long-awaited return to Ithaca.

During the course of the past thirty years, video art has blossomed well beyond the expectations of its early practioners and theorists. Born as a critique of television and a medium at odds with traditional pictorial forms, at its inception video was filled with an utopian promise that lead artists to belive in a true democratization of art. Today it has reached a pinnacle of technical sophistication and aesthetic importance that was only dreamed of in the 1960s when the accessibility of the Portapak camera seemed to allow limitless creative possibilities.