Victory Over the Sun

12.5 min / 16mm / 2007

Dormant sites of past World's Fairs breed an eruptive struggle between spirit and matter, ego and industry, futurism and failure. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory; nothing lasts forever even cold November rain.

"Punctuated by psychotronic animated interludes, an anthemic “November Rain” wails on the remains of past Worlds Fairs overtaken by nature. Michael Robinson has absorbed the traditions of modernism and his work often makes direct reference to touchstones of the movement (as the title indicates, 'Victory Over the Sun' is a Futurist playground/graveyard) alongside more contemporary pop culture reference points. But he deals with modernism in a truly historical sense. Those days are gone. Long gone. Stronger, more eternal forces often bubble up from beneath the surface to reveal what was there all along (and may be all that we have left now). It’s possible to bring about the feelings and majesty that modernism brought forth, but it’s just nostalgia animating the corpse—like the ants in Ingmar Bergman’s snakeskin. There is no beauty without despair." - Chris Stults, Wexner Center