Ola Uruguay Real Estate and Investments

There are events in Montevideo that I like, and there are those that I love. My favorite of late is Pecha Kucha, which is a cultural event that originated in Tokyo in February 2003 for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. The main objective of Pecha Kucha (which means “buzz” or “sound of conversation” in Japanese) is to promote interchange, creativity, the meeting of disciplines.

Pecha Kucha gathers creative types and entrepreneurs to present their ideas. Each presenter has 6 minutes and 40 seconds to present their various projects and designs in a very unique and specific way—in 20 images, projected for 20 seconds each. My friend, with whom I went to the event, said “the great thing about Pecha Kucha is that even if you don’t like a presenter’s topic or style, it will only last 6 minutes, and you can always just look at the photos.”

Since its inception in Tokyo in 2003, the event has become very popular. There were over 610 Pecha Kucha nights in 2009, in over 300 cities worldwide—that’s an average of 50 events each month.

On April 28th, the third Uruguayan edition of Pecha Kucha took place in Montevideo’s Alianza Francesa (which, by the way, has an excellent French café that does a great croque monsieur at Bulevard Artigas 1229).

The twelve presenters for the third edition were Rodolfo Fuentes (design), Nicolás Jodal (technology), Jacqueline Lacasa (visual arts), Marcelo Gualano (architecture), Gabriel Galli and Brian Mackern (transdisciplinary), Gabriel Calderón (theater), Natalia Mardero (literature), Álvaro Ahunchain (advertising), Marcos Umpierrez (performance artist), Florencia Martinelli (dance), and Rocío Ramírez (science).

As always, the themes presented were varied and captivating: Gabriel Galli and Brian Mackern started the event off with a visual tour de force entitled “The supremacy of Uruguay”, charting history’s momentary fascinations with Uruguay, and the absurdity/splendor of the idea of Uruguay taking over the world. Álvaro Ahunchain, who comes from the advertising sector, presented a recent collaboration with Uruguayan musician and composer, Jaime Roos. Breaking down their design process revealed the complexities of creating from nothing; how a blank page is just as scary as it seems, and must be approached with reverence and bravery. Natalia Mardero’s “The spaces of creation,” was reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay, A Room of One’s Own, which argued that for an artist to create, they must have their own creative space. Mardero showed images of local and international writers’ creative spaces.

Entrance was free. Seats were limited and were given in the order of arrival, beginning at 8.20 p.m. Fortunately I arrived early, and was able to get a seat for the first half. With over 1,000 people in attendance, most of the audience watched the presentations through simultaneous projection from the house gardens. The night was lovely, and for half of the second half, I too perched on the outside stairwell watching the presentations on the big screen. Whether you watched inside or out, there certainly was a buzz in the air.

Pecha Kucha Montevideo is organized by the cultural studio, Metroveinte. For more information, interested parties can contact Silvana Bergson at silvana@metroveinte.com or consult www.metroveinte.com. For more information in English about Pecha Kucha, check out its original website, www.pecha-kucha.org. For more information about the upcoming Pecha Kucha events in Montevideo (currently slated for August), check out: www.pechakuchamontevideo.org.