“Do you want to feel the Freedom of Spirit?” asks Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi at the start of his nine-minute digital video. By its sinister conclusion, according to curator Yoko Ott, you might wish you had said no. The whole show is based on struggle and chagrin, and the feelings are international. The London-based Mexican artist Raul Ortega Ayala wrestles an office chair into submission; the New York—based French artist Hugh Walton types out his frustrations with his body. And Seattle’s Shawn Patrick Landis, in a new work, stages his own hanging. (Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl S, 621-1945. 5—8 pm, free.)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...