Quip 'n Slide
How's your 20/20 vision?
By Robert Faires, Fri., Nov. 18, 2011
Encapsulate your career, your philosophy, your creative process in 400 seconds, utilizing for visual aids only 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. Can you do it? That's the challenge faced by each of the participants in Pecha Kucha Night, the ongoing presentational series for which local architects, designers, photographers, painters, writers, sculptors, and filmmakers stand before a screen and give you some idea about what they do in a brisk six minutes, 40 seconds. (The series takes its name from a Japanese term for "chitchat," but it might just as easily be translated as "Grown-up Show-and-Tell.") And most of those creative types who take on the 400-second challenge manage the feat quite entertainingly – so much so that what began as a local event in Tokyo in 2003 has spread like a bad rumor in high school to some 450 cities across the globe. Austin, naturally, adored the idea and has been chitchatting two or three times a year for five years now. Since 2009, one of those annual Pecha Kucha Nights has been scheduled during the East Austin Studio Tour, opening one more window into artists' ways of working during the two-week period when our town suddenly and briefly goes art-mad. If anything, that's only served to heighten the popularity of the local Pecha Kuchas, which always draw crowds. (The fact that they're free may be a factor as well.) The mix of presenters is always fascinating, as evident in the lineup of Pecha Kucha Night Austin #12: Katy Vine (writing), Herman Dyal (architecture), Alyson Fox (visual art), Connie Arismendi (visual art), Jay B. Sauceda (photography), Will Hornaday (culture), Andrew Yates and Mike Woolf (film), Ashley Chiles (film), Bale Creek Allen (visual art), and Robert Kraft (music). Is there anyone there that you wouldn't want at show-and-tell?
Pecha Kucha Night Austin #12 takes place Thursday, Nov. 17, 8:20pm, at the former Goodwill store, 916 Springdale, near Blue Genie. For more information, visit www.pecha-kucha.org/night/austin/12.
Download the East Austin Studio Tour map.
