The way you are as a person dictates the kind of art you make. It is in your nature. This may seem like an obvious statement, but this is at the root of Rosalind Nashashibi's art. She is drawn to locations she instinctively likes, films them in a way that she likes, with shots that she likes and when she edits, she uses the parts she likes best. There is something truthful about this approach, and is why we see idea and aesthetic meld together in her films.

Rosalind, born on 24 / 7, is not someone to do things in half measures. The works have a precision and accuracy to them, in how they are made and presented and what their subjects are. For each film she knows exactly what is right and what is not. In this way a subconscious matrix is discovered by gathering and fitting in the material; using film-making as a tool to discover intuitively where her interests lie. To watch these films is a rich and aesthetic experience. Humanity is observed with a generosity, which is also extended to the audience. The work is beautifully crafted, in a process like quilting pieces selected and combined, patterns created.

Three (1999), an early video work, shows three characters involved in a choreographed series of gestures in an American parking lot. They play out parts cyclically, turning from the camera, walking to the edge of the shot, returning to the centre of the screen. The movements are familiar from the language of narrative film. Their behaviour suggests a narrative but the characters remain silent. In a similar way that is found in allegorical paintings, the story is told by the eye contact between the figures: who meets whose gaze and who turns away. A story can be guessed at due to the gesture, location and the assumed identity of those pictured. Words, which seem to belong to another discipline, are not forthcoming. As with all film, we are given a framework and left to fill in the blanks ourselves. However the gaps here are extended beyond their normal filmic length to a point where narrative dissolves and plot collapses in to subjective daydream.

Although very different from Three, the film The States of Things which captures Salvation Army bargain hunters also tells a known story. The desire for a bargain, returning home jubilant, being pipped at the post, quiet envy.

Playing with our filmic interpretation, the Egyptian music soundtrack geographically displaces the activity and we find ourselves interpreting west as east. The quality of the film and music marry well, they have a similar sensibility. We are drawn into a grey area which extends our familiarity with the scene to other market places, readdressing our ideas of poverty. The work is a play on ethnography; we flip back and forth between recognition and observation, up close or at arm's length from the scene. Our point of view is never objective, and the suggestion that it could be becomes ridiculous. Do we see humanity as a whole, a continuum? Or, from our detached viewpoint behind Rosalind's eye, do we see all humanity as slightly other, a club to which we do not yet belong?

As in Three, the activity is highly choreographed, but this time from a source within the film; the layout of the stalls, the position of something eye-catching, the stance of the keeper. A shift has occurred in the making of these two works. The conventions that we use to form a narrative in an acted scene are also here amid the jumble. Perhaps it was a realisation that the human dynamics that interest Rosalind are played out in everyday scenarios, eliminating the need to construct them using actors. Acting mimics actual behaviour and of course, it is unsurprising that actual behaviour can also mimic film. This slightly crooked route to narrative shows that the works are primarily drama rather than documentary. Non-dramatic events are made into non-eventful dramas. There is a subtle departure from the everyday.

The protagonists of Rosalind's films are also away from the everyday. They are taking time out, in a way that could be to do with relaxing, but equally could be about killing time. In Open Day (2001), we are allowed special access to sit in on a yoga class, go on a trip to a climbing wall and perambulate around the Barbican Centre. The atmosphere of the film is heightened by music, this time music familiar to a western audience. It invites us to share in their time-filling, almost as if we were truant. We observe patterns, formed by activity and surroundings. As if this is what we would see if we had all the time in the world to watch one another. Open day events give permission to look behind normally closed doors; they are institutions in themselves. Structures designed for the public benefit recur in Rosalind's work.

In another visit we are welcomed to a new club, this time 6000 miles away in Omaha, Nebraska. In Midwest:Field a group of men are filmed flying model glider planes. We are included in their circle, immersed in their chat even after the pictures have ended. This time sound neither removes us to another culture or to an imagined space. We are right there, on the ground looking to the sky, getting lost in our own thoughts as the planes circle, first in black and white, then in pale colours. Like the protagonists, when watching the film at some points we find ourselves totally alone, engrossed, child-like. As in the previous films, there is activity but no action, narratives but no story. The aviators are absorbed, and we watch them in their state of oblivion. And like the aviators, we are also at leisure, watching in the art gallery. Are we on a sink or a lift? A lift, going up.

The films are not critical or explanatory of their subject matter. They articulate what is sympathetic about the subjects, what we can identify with, and at some points are allowed virtually to experience. As in The States of Things there is a warm humour here to do with reserving our judgement. We go to an art gallery to watch men play with planes. High culture, low culture, our culture, their culture - somehow what comes out of it is that culture, whosever, is an attempt to improve the quality of our lives.

Midwest is also a film about idle time. Passing time is counted out by the rhythm of the film, the soundtrack constructed from sounds recorded at the location. Again the people filmed are separated from mainstream society. In this film they are communities who are down at heel. Men are waiting by a rehab centre for their handout; Mexicans eat in their neighbourhood café. Vehicles pass through landscapes, but our eye remains with the pedestrian. We watch these people and places; revisiting some locations a number of times as the day wears on.

The films transparently reflect their subject. The environment dictates the way the characters will move. The way the characters move informs how the film will be edited. Also choreographed by a system, the camera behaves on the street according to the rules of public space. The point of view is detached for the same reasons we avoid people's eyes on the street, and don't walk close to strangers. These panoramas are like cinematic interludes, interspersed with glimpses of narrative: an empty car, a man greeting a friend, a figure seen through a window, the group in the café. Human presence activates landscapes and warms interiors, but does not carry a cumulative motive. Holding the Nebraskan town up to the stencil of the movie, we feel a vacuum of plot that reflects the vacuum of middle America.

Dahiet al Bareed (District of the Post Office) is made in a similar way to Midwest. The film's location has no jurisdiction. Rubbish burns in the street, men play football, go to the barber. There is no work here. Enforced leisure is recorded. Through the film light, gesture and time become important in this no-man's land. The sun shines on a waste ground where a boy is playing with a fire. Like a kid with fever, we watch as if through plate glass at a world made more vivid, though in a way that is hard to discern from normal. Can we recall normal?

The aesthetic decisions Rosalind makes in her films articulate the world, without anything out of the ordinary taking place. The eye of the artist is very particular, drawing parallels between occurrences in different cultures and territories. The films are political not in the way we are used to from the media, seeking out a story in order to illustrate an angle. They are the other way round, observing societies without judgement or the slant that direct narrative can bring.