Big ideas behind chit-chat format

As much as I would like to believe I have enough focus to while away an evening at an art or design lecture, my attention span is… this keyboard is filthy. What was I saying?

Our hyper-accelerated culture calls for accelerated information delivery systems. We’ve reached the PechaKucha period: lectures delivered as 20 slides, 20 seconds each, with breaks that involve a cash bar.

It’s not exactly new; this month marks the 10th anniversary of the very first PechaKucha — Japanese for chit-chat.” (Here’s a fun way to remember how to pronounce it.)

Networking events and guest lectures never looked so dry and dull since I went to my first PechaKucha event. For the uninitiated, PechaKucha 20×20 is a simple presentation format dreamed up by a couple of architects living in Tokyo. The presenter speaks, the images roll, and before you know it it’s all wrapped up. Next! If the content of each presenter isn’t enough to hold you for six minutes and 40 seconds, there’s usually plenty of entertainment watching that presenter getting the bum’s rush from the slides automatically moving forward. The pace and the party atmosphere keeps things rolling along nicely. No wonder PechaKucha has gone global.

For artists, getting familiar with the format is becoming sort of essential as PechaKucha is likely to continue to take over the graphically banal PowerPoint presentations where most times the presenter just reads what they’ve typed on the screen and the audience feels like putting a gun to their collective head. Or maybe that’s just me. 

Sharing thoughts about the creative process, past projects and future explorations can be tough-going, I’ve discovered as I try to splice all my tangential thoughts together for an in-class PechaKucha next week. I’ve been scouring the official website for some good examples. One favourite is Gary Cheng’s insight into his incredible transformer Hong Kong apartment. If anything, he reminds me to have a little fun with the format.