DANMite,colloquium /Robert Lawrence
Un Message Evidemment
Un Message Evidemment is an ongoing collaborative film/performance. The performance is built around the making an interactive film.
The film is a story about communicationŠ. The performance is a communication about storyŠ.
The film is shot but not written. The film will be written through phones, sms's, email, conversations at festivals, workshops, or through www.unmessage.com.
But there is not one story or one film. Anyone can download website footage and make their own Message Evidemment. U.M.E. examines and transforms the structure of filmmaking. U.M.E. is not "a film" but an undetermined number of hybrid minimalist-structuralist-sendups-of-whammy-films.
We don't make it. We don't own it. We are only the instigators of an internet-facilitated media ecology that we hope will carry on just fine without us.
Bio
Lawrence's interdisciplinary work examines our discourses on place, nature, and technology as a way to ask questions about the cultural changes of the information age. He is currently developing several digital media projects based on research conducted during a 10-month Fulbright Fellowship in South East Asia.
Recent projects have addressed contemporary issues concerning genetic engineering as well as issues of land use and land ethics. Lawrence has worked with experimental narrative in written word and video. He has worked extensively with photography, video, text, mixed media sculpture and installation. For the last seven years he has expanded his practice to creatively engage the unique conceptual opportunities of the Internet, particularly in the manner in which the Web facilitates his ongoing examination of issues of 'location', of 'site', of geographical and cultural 'position'. Lawrence has also been using the Internet to develop new structures for creative collaboration uniquely facilitated by digital technology.
Lawrence received his BA and MFA from the University of California at Berkeley and San Diego. His art is exhibited internationally and he has received numerous fellowships and awards including: NEA/Rockefeller Grant for Interdisciplinary Projects, Bush Foundation Artists Fellowship, Mcknight Foundation Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Grants for both Book Arts and for Media Arts Installations, and Film in the Cities Regional Grants for Film/Video. Lawrence is Assistant Professor of Art, Director of Electronic Media, and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Center for Arts and Technology at the University of South Florida.