Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Klein and Dytham, both architects, knew their peers' propensity for long-windedness -- "give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you'll be trapped for hours," the Pecha Kucha Night organisers write on their website - so they limited each presentation to 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds, allowing presenters a total time of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The format keeps presentations concise, holds the audience's interest and allows more people to show.
"Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a demand that seems to be global - as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world," according to pecha-kucha.org.
The presentations at this year's Pecha Kucha Night in Budapest featured everything from creating a wireless village to help underprivileged children access the internet to new ways to use garages. Among the presentations that made an impression on were ones by the Afghan Adiba Amani, who lives in Germany but returned to his homeland after 28 years to uncover the countries hidden beauty; Antal Lakner, whose fictitious plan for an underground line in Istanbul mirrored with black humour the plan for the new metro line - currently under construction - in Budapest; and Gergely László and Péter Rákosi's conversion of a row of garages in the industrial city of Dunaújváros into spaces for art.
Author: Éva Kelemen
