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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Point 8 Blog / News 20x20x20 on 09/17… or in other words, Pecha Kucha is back!
Posted By Manoj P Kesavan on Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 11:11 AM
What do making jewelry, fighting racism, re-inventing city/regional planning, and dancing the Tango have in common? Well, I really don’t know, except that those would be four of the 20 different topics featured in this Thursday’s Pecha Kucha Night. The presentations will cover a wide range of media, personalities and emotions. There will also be an engaged, diverse audience of a few hundred.
However we weren’t so sure about anything like that when we started off a little more than a year ago. We were out on a limb, hoping that there would be at least a few talented people who had something interesting to share; that we would be lucky if around 100 people showed up to the event … in other words, we ourselves had given in to the skepticism about the creative talent and community support in our region — the same “inferiority complex” that we were fighting against in our forums!
To our pleasant surprise, it did not take too long for our city to prove us wrong. At our very first event, held on a weeknight in the middle of the last year’s post-Hurricane Ike gas crisis, we had a standing-room-only crowd! But what was even more impressive was the quality and the range of the 14 presentations. We realized that we were really on to something!
What makes Pecha Kucha Nights so successful here — and for that matter, in more than 200 other cities around the world?
First of all the format is so simple — 20 images at 20 seconds each. That’s it — there are hardly any other rules. And as the last events showed us, there is hardly a topic that couldn’t be presented using that format.
Then there is the not-so-secret ingredient: beer!
As a former presenter from Tokyo says: “The beauty of Pecha Kucha Night lies in the tension between the chaos of a full-blown party and the politeness of an art school crit, with the snappy pace holding it all together.” In that spirit, in most cities where the series is successful, they are held in informal environments like bars, coffee shops, warehouses etc. The whole tone is relaxed; there is the freedom to move around and socialize.
Moreover, in the process, art and design are taken out of the pristine spaces of museums and institutions and shares the stage with every other issue/topic — funny and tragic, personal and public, mundane and profound — that make up our lives. In the process, they open themselves up to new perspectives and fresh audiences.
This Thursday night we will have our fourth and biggest yet Pecha Kucha Night, bringing together more than 20 individuals — some pretty well known in their field and beyond, some relatively obscure — to share their work, their message, their passion.
Come prepared to be amused, provoked and inspired.
Event Details:
Pecha Kucha Charlotte Vol. 4 – Thursday, 17th of September, 2009, starting at 7:30 p.m., at the Hart Witzen Gallery, NoDa (136 East 36th St., Charlotte, 28206). Admission is $5 at the door (+ cash bar). See www.point8.org/pechakucha for more details.
Volume 4 of Pecha Kucha Night Charlotte is organized by point8 forum, with help and support from the Winthrop University Galleries. Pecha Kucha(TM) is devised and shared by Klein Dytham Architecture, Tokyo.
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