Since 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience, a cinema of ambivalent melancholy and existential danger. The General Returns from One Place to Another pits a cynical Frank O’Hara monologue against an ominous vibrating landscape. And We All Shine On is a machine-eyed vision of a post-apocalyptic paradise. Light Is Waiting, in which a Full House episode “devours itself from the inside out,” excavates a hypnotic nightmare of a culture lost at sea. Frequently working with abjected imagery-forgotten television, mid-century magazines-and overly familiar pop songs, Robinson’s work flirts with a resigned pessimism, yet dares to find hope in the very heart of despair. Also screening: Tidal, Victory Over the Sun, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, Chiquitita and the Soft Escape and All Through the Night. (Steve Polta)
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Shine On
Films by Michael Robinson
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts