PK: Have it your way

Though already impressively shitty for such a young century, the 21st at least has one cool thing going for it: Five years ago, a pair of architects in Tokyo came up with a way of doing PowerPoint presentations that’s actually the opposite of boring. They called it Pecha Kucha (pronounced “peh-chak-cha”), because that’s how the Japanese say “chitchat,” and now it’s a social and aesthetic phenomenon, happening regularly, often drunkenly, in 123 cities all over the planet—including ours, as of last month.

The Pecha Kucha Night is an experimental multimedia show and tell wherein architects, designers and other creative types present 20 slides each, with 20 seconds per slide, on whatever topics they choose. As Wired magazine sagely observed, “The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art.” It’s almost as good as time-traveling androids and world peace and flying cars.

Catch the second of Sacramento’s free monthly Pecha Kucha Nights at Hina’s Tea, 2319 K Street, on Friday, May 9, at 20:20 p.m. (Get it? No, sorry. Right. Twenty past 8 p.m.) For more details, call local PK Night coordinator Claire Obenson at (916) 852-8313 or visit www.pecha-kucha.org.