Chantal Akerman was both a film director and a video artist, known for deliberately blurring the distinctions between those categories. Many of her works dispense with typical film narrative in favor of meticulous compositions that use hypnotic pacing and long, steady takes to allow the viewer to become aware of the passage of time.

NOW is her final video installation, and perhaps her busiest and most kinetic. It has neither beginning nor end, but repeats continuously. Projections surround the viewer with fast-moving footage of an unidentified desert landscape. Each has a different, fragmentary soundtrack, so that sounds overlap in an impressionistic medley: muffled footsteps, traffic, birdcalls, farm animals, gunfire, helicopters, the voices of children and soldiers, a Jewish prayer, a distant muezzin singing a Muslim call to prayer, waves striking a shore. As these sounds accumulate, and the desolate land streaks by like a painting in time, the effect is increasingly ominous. Akerman constructs a complete visual and aural realm, fully occupying the space and creating an intense, immersive experience—a meditation on the power, meaning, and mystery of time.