PechaKucha takes over Holland

22 Mar 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Worldwide

It was this very site where I came across the Pecha Kucha night for the first time and mind you, that’s only 7 weeks ago. In the mean time - over here in Holland - things have been traveling at an enormous speed resolving in the first two PechaKucha Nights in The Netherlands!

written by Mark Hoekstra

How did all of this happen? I’m involved in Nieuwe Garde: a network for young creatives here in my Groningen (a small town in the north of Holland) and after finding out about the concept of PechaKucha Nights it all came together.

With cities like Tokyo, London and such - where does Groningen fit in? Well - we simply didn’t feel like waiting and gave it a try to see, if the magical touch of this fast presentation format would work over here, too. And: it did! Thanks go out to Rutger Middendorp initiator of Nieuwe Garde who fell for the idea right away. Only three days later we found a suitable place for organizing our own little PechaKucha Night: a church! (Uleshka’s note: Whow! There must be some connection with Dutch creatives and churches! Should I revert to Christianity?)

The ‘Remonstrantse Kerk’ - a church in the city center turned out to be the most suitable place. This church was just recently restaured (coordinated and designed by the Japanese architect Moriko Kira.

I just wrote this article about the PechaKucha Night phenomenon (in Dutch) and therefor got in touch with Mark Dytham and Max Fraser. That’s how I found out, that there was another PechaKucha Night being planned in Holland around the same time: PechaKucha Rotterdam organized by Bart Cardinaal, former employee of Klein Dytham architects in Tokyo!

Well - fact is, that Groningen and Rotterdam are only a few hundred miles away - but the idea travelled across the whole globe to finally meet again in the same spot!

After getting an approval from Mark Dytham to use their recipe we were ready to go! Remembering my words from my article a little while back “Now that’s another quirky event for Tokyoties only!” - we decided to prove the opposite: PechaKucha will be everywhere - especially in this little country.

Rotterdam, 8th of March

Rotterdam - being a much bigger city than Groningen and having more of an architectural heritage was the place to kick off PechaKucha in the Netherlands and probably the best place to do so. Their setting comes closer to what I imagine it to be like in Tokyo’s Super Deluxe: a cellar of an old movietheatre turned into a nightclub.

Presenters ranged from Floris Alkemade of OMA and Felix Madrazzo of Supersudaca to Vlieger & Vandam - presenting their stylish handbags.

They were followed by a presentation about urban exploration by Robert de Vrieze of HUB, ringtones introduced by Martin Putto and - another project related to telephones - telephone boxing presented by Femke Bijlsma.

(Uleshka’s note: I remember this project by Allard and Femke very well! It was a big success during Tokyo Desingers Week 2003. Their idea was to turn the simple, almost weightless everyday action of having to make a phone call into a really hard-work physical process. In order to make a call, one had to hit huge number-buttons spread across a big room (I also remember that muscle ache!). It was really great to see so many people queuing up for it - just to make one free call to the person they love sharing their conversation with the audience (especially funny, considering that most people looked up their number from their cell phone.)

The movie theatre was packed and the ambience was just great. The sheer fact that about 100 more people were dying to go in, but had to go back home because the place was full to the brim tells you how PechaKucha was immediately loved in this country.

Groningen, 16th of March

In the beautiful surrounding of the ‘Remonstrantse Kerk’ - the setting for PechaKucha Groningen couldn’t have been better (especially since the local media came along to get a glimpse of this Japanese phenomena).

While organizing our version, we emphasized that everyone can present their ideas and material - as long as it contains 20 slides (and 20 slides only) and each slide would only be shown for 20 seconds. Seems like we pretty much managed to get a broad selection of creativity in our first edition: presenters ranged from Sander Alblas talking about Dripstone Caves in the city center no one ever noticed before…

… to a positive rant about Creative Commons licensing by Bjorn Wijers and further: photography presented by Sabina Theijs.

One of my personal highlights of this first PechaKucha Night Groningen was Jelien Veenstra - a student of the Academie voor Popcultuur in Leeuwarden, who chose to read a story by Dutch children’s book writer Toon Tellegen. She accompanied this story by her own drawings which had some kind of a disarming effect - considered what feeling you usually get from Tellegen’s stories.

Even though I never joined a PechaKucha Night in Tokyo, I’m pretty sure that - apart from the location - we experienced a few different things over here. For instance, two of the available slots for the night were filled by Une - a promising band which prepared two six-minute-forty (that’s 20×20 seconds) mini-concerts.

Due to a leap of faith one of our presenters was unable to make, so all of a sudden there was one whole slot still to be filled! This turned out to be another different Groningen special since we used that for a 20 second “first reaction”-critizism from our sidekicks Gunther & Umtzi (which - in a far and away resemblance - made you think of Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets) - after each completed presentation. Gunther & Umtzi spoke in some kind of pseudo-German-accent and made us believe they were early 80s housemusic pioneers from Nordrhein-Westfalen.

They improvised in such a marvelous and hilarious way that a large part of the audience had to dry their tears of laughter.

Both Dutch PechaKucha Nights will have follow-ups and I’m sure they will continue to provide a podium for big names and small names all along - paying hommage to the original concept. One thing is for sure: this creative recipe isn’t just for Tokyoties any longer. Pecha Kucha is taking over the world.

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