CLOSE-UP: MICHAEL ROBINSON

A retrospective screening of films by American filmmaker and artist Michael Robinson.

MAD LADDERS

USA | 2015 | 10 min
The prophetic ramblings of an unseen narrator recount fantastical dreams of the coming Rapture, as crystalline imagery of rolling clouds gives way to heavily processed video of moving stage sets from The American Music Awards telecasts of the 1980s and early 1990s. Blooming and pulsing in and out of geometric abstraction, this swirling storm of rising curtains, spinning set pieces, and unveiled pop idols forms an occult spectacle, driven by its impassioned narrator and an 8-bit leitmotif. Like a half-remembered dream of mythology, television, and religion, the film strikes a hypnotic balance between storytelling and free-falling.

THE GENERAL RETURNS FROM ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER

USA | 2006 | 11 min
Through a concurrently indulgent and skeptical experience of the beautiful, the film draws an uneasy balance between the romantic and the horrid. A nihilistic monologue (from Frank O'Hara's play of the same title) attempts to undercut the sincerity of the landscape, but there are stronger forces surfacing.

HOLD ME NOW

USA | 2008 | 5 min
Plagued by blindness, sloth, and devotion, a troubled scene from Little House On The Prairie offers itself up to karaoke exorcism.

THE DARK, KRYSTLE

USA | 2013 | 10 min
The cabin is on fire! Krystle can't stop crying, Alexis won't stop drinking, and the fabric of existence hangs in the balance, again and again and again. "The Dark, Krystle brilliantly re-purposes the artificiality of stock gesture, allowing viewers to see its hollowness and to feel it recharging with new emotional power. Equal parts archival fashion show and feminist morality play, Robinson's montage rekindles the unfinished business of identity, consumption, and excess in 1980s pop culture." - Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago

IF THERE BE THORNS

USA | 2009 | 13 min
A dark wave of incest and magic burns across thetropics, forging a knotted trail into the black hole.Taking its title from the V.C. Andrews novel (a sequel to"Flowers In The Attic"), and weaving together textsfrom Shirley Jackson, William S. Burroughs, and Stevie Nicks, the film constructs a collaged narrative of threestar-crossed siblings searching for one another acrossthe unstable landscapes of their respective exiles.

LIGHT IS WAITING

USA | 2007 | 11 min
A very special episode of television's Full House devours itself from the inside out, excavating a hypnotic nightmare of a culture lost at sea. Tropes of video art and family entertainment face off in a luminous orgy neither can survive.

YOU DON'T BRING ME FLOWERS

USA | 2005 | 8 min
Viewed at its seams, a collection of National Geographic landscapes from the 1960s and 70's conjures an obsolete romanticism currently peddled to propagate entitlement and individualism from sea to shining sea; the slideshow deforms into a bright white distress signal.

THESE HAMMERS DON'T HURT US

USA | 2010 | 13 min
Tired of underworld and overworld alike, Isis escorts her favorite son on their final curtain call down the Nile, leaving a neon wake of shattered tombs and sparkling sarcophagi.

Michael Robinson


Michael Robinson (b.1981) is an American artist whose work in film, video and collage explores the joys and dangers of mediated experience, riding the fine lines between humor and terror, nostalgia and contempt, ecstasy and hysteria.
His work has shown in both solo and group exhibitions at a variety of museums, festivals and galleries including The 2012 Whitney Biennial, International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA P.S.1, The New York Film Festival, Whitechapel Gallery, REDCAT Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, BFI London Film Festival, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Hong Kong Int. Film Festival, The Austrian Film Museum, Sundance Film Festival, Berlinale, Toronto Int. Film Festival, and The MMCA Seoul. Michael was the recipient of a 2014 MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a 2012 Creative Capital grant, a 2012 Kazuko Trust Award (presented by Film Society of Lincoln Center), a 2011‑2012 Residency Award from The Wexner Center for the Arts, a 2009 residency from The Headlands Center for the Arts, and his films have received awards from numerous festivals. He was featured as one of the "50 Best Filmmakers Under 50" by Cinema Scope magazine in 2012, was listed among the top ten avant‑garde filmmakers of the 2000's by Film Comment, and his recent gallery shows have been reviewed in Art in America, Frieze, and Blouin Artinfo. Michael holds a BFA from Ithaca College, and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (U.I.C.), and he has taught previously at Binghamton University, Otis College of Art and Design, U.I.C., and the Schule Friedl Kubelka in Vienna. He is represented by Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago, is distributed by Video Data Bank, and lives and works in Los Angeles.
September 30
18:55
STANISLAVSKY ELECTROTHEATRE, 18+
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PROGRAMME 2018