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Just An Online Minute... UBUNTU And Room 13 Encourage Art And Humanity

UBUNTU Exhibition, Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
January 27, 2010

Last night I treated my eyeballs to their favorite meal: a photography and film exhibition.   Emmanuel Andre, Worldwide Operations Director at TBWA Worldwide, was inspired by his trip to South Africa as part of the Room13, a community of art studios connecting professional adults with art-impassioned youths around the world.  Each Room 13 is different, but the vision is the same: melding skills, embracing different perspectives, and cultivating curiosity within a thriving ng art community.  UBUNTU was born out of ANdre's experience.  And at the core, UBUNTU is about the importance of being human.

You know what reminds me of being human? The subway.  Specifically the 6 train heading uptown around 6 p.m.  It doesn't get a whole lot more visceral than that.  I played pole chicken with about eight people.  Oh, you've never heard of pole chicken?  It's a two-part game.  Your first set of adversaries are the other commuters jockeying for stabilization space on the metal subway poles.  The object of the game is to not touch each other -- with bonus points awarded for best skunk eye given to a warm-leathery-handed offender.  The other adversaries are germs, viruses, and other cute secretions that swarm the pole.  After my rousing game, I was excited to fill my eyes with beauty, replacing the white mass transit rage that had taken hold enroute.

The Austrian Cultural Forum is a narrow echoing space with four or five levels (I forget which -- I just know I climbed a lot of stairs).  The ground floor was the spot for the welcome area and the coat hanger situation.  Up the first flight of stairs I went, pausing in front of the photos that lined the walls.  People were pouring up and down the stairs like ants, only their transports were short plastic wine cups instead of dirt granules.

On the third level a "Blair Witch Project"-style room with a floor to ceiling projection screen played the film by Stephanie Wang Breal  documenting the student artists.  Shadows of guests filtered in and out of the coolest room in the building through the course of the reception. 

As I made my way to the top floor, still sweating weirdly from the uncharacteristically warm evening, I spotted a familiar face.  "Was that Sway?" I asked myself after recognizing the former MTV VJ.  Confirmed: the man was Sway.  I had just seen him at the Notional event, where meeting Nick Kroll made my career highlight list.  Come on, he's more than a caveman!

Breaking up the cocktail reception briefly, Emmanuel Andre addressed the crowd, again emphasizing the origins of UBUNTU (which is not, by the way, just a programming language), embodied in the quote by Nelson Mandella as "that profound African sense that we are only human through the humanity of other human beings."

The crowd was modestly artsy-fartsy, with brightly hued stockings, towering helmets of wildly swept hair, thick-rimmed glasses, muted airy chuckling, deep-voiced debates on the use of color to evoke emotion, debates on whether or not Wendy (name changed to protect the innocent) did the right thing dumping that guy, French accents, accents, and pockets of foreign-to-me tongues oscillating across the room.

The prints, priced from $200 to $1000.00, were being scooped up faster than Tiger Woods scoops up phone numbers.  And guess what? 100% of the proceeds are going to Room 13 International.

Still adding photos to the Flickr set!

You can read more about Room 13 here.

You can find out more about UBUNTU -- there is a Facebook page.

AND if you want to help TBWA establish the first Room 13 in New York, contact marianne.stefanowicz AT tbwaworld.com

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