PechaKucha is a Japanese form of presentation and the word means “chit-chat.” Homer’s Dave Webster, one of the presenters in Wednesday’s performance explained that “it’s basically a PowerPoint with a limited number of slides and time, or, enforced concision.” Each presentation uses 20 slides that are displayed for 20 seconds with a talk of 6 minutes and 40 seconds or 400 seconds. The event will be held at the Porcupine Theater and is being coordinated and curated by Bunnell’s Brianna Allen.
The topics that can be explored through PechaKucha are fairly limitless. For example, “there are people who will go on for an entire presentation about a particular railroad car that they think is the best one ever built with 20 pictures of it and a story. Many of the stories are very niche but it’s an interesting concept because of the forced concision,” Webster said. He also compared it to a general public media story or pop song that is approximately 3 minutes or the listener will lose attention due to attention span. For the Homer event, presenters will basically be sharing personal passions, insights and collective embodiment, according to Allen.
Allen said that she was introduced to PechaKucha while living in Maine. “For me, it’s the diversity of stories that illuminate how we all are creatives, we are capable of crafting and performing our own stories. Storytelling is the first art form,” she said, “stories gather people and when people gather, the energy is palpable.” Allen says this is the 5th in-person PechaKucha Bunnell has hosted in Homer.
Both Saskia Esslinger and Webster said they chose some of their visual images prior to composing their talks, but there is no defined process for how to create PechaKucha talk. The limitation is in the timing.
Esslinger and Webster each shared some features of what they will be talking about on Wednesday evening. “Mine is about the garden revolution and it's about how gardening can change us by getting our hands in the soil, in recreating our relationships with nature. We have a different relationship with nature than most. Most of us have a very disconnected relationship with nature, so if we can reconnect with nature we can transform our lives and the planet,” Esslinger said.
Webster chose to give fewer details about his presentation but rather the process of how he chose the topic. The title of his piece is “Divination in Unlikely Places.”
“I will tell you my process of coming up with a topic. I saw that it was suggested that it was generated from images. I thought it would be better if I got the images first. I had on my phone a series of about 20 images that made me think of divination as a human trait that has been around since people could talk to each other. Everybody wants to know what's going to happen. So they've invented all these ways to predict the future. And so I talk about some of the different ways and how it's evolved over time and everything else. Then I talk about sort of my preferred method of seeing patterns in nature which will predict the future,” he said.
More information about Wednesday’s event is available on the Bunnell website: bunnellarts.org. There you can find the other presenters and the topics they will be sharing. The event will be held at the Porcupine Theater. The cash bar will be used to support the mission and programs of Bunnell Street Arts Center.
