PechaKucha Night, now in over 900 cities, was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.
As the city's design and art platform, the DESIGNART festival has gathered over 70 local and international designers in 70 locations around the main creative areas of Tokyo proper from October 16th to 22nd! Overlapping with Tokyo Fashion Week, it will be an amazing melting pot of creativity, giving Tokyo the international design event that it deserves!
DESIGNART is taking over Tokyo from October 16th to 22nd. A new design and art platform co-established by PechaKucha Founders Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. A big PechaKucha Night in Omotesando Hills, Tokyo on Monday 16th at 5pm will help launch the festival. Speakers include Lady Gaga’s shoe designer - Noritaka Tatehana, digital designer for U2, Jamiroquai, OKGO - Moritz Waldemeyer and Swedish design and architecture superstars Claesson Koivisto Rune. Super Model Ai Tomonaga and Danish Florist Nicolai Bergman will be opening the event. We are expecting a BIG crowd - it’s a free event - see you there! http://designart.jp/en/
This week's PechaKucha People spotlight lands on PechaKucha and KDa Architecture founders, Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham. Dedicated to Tokyo's creative class, these two have co-founded the innovative art festival in Tokyo, DESIGNART. They, along with over 70 local and international designers, will be hosting events in 70 different locations around Tokyo from October 16th to 22nd. Along with their hardworking team of All-star architects and designers, Astrid and Mark have diligently worked their way to the top of Tokyo's architecture and design platforms, making aspects of design and architecture available to all. Feel free to come and check out their work along with the amazing work of designers from around the world and be prepared to amazed!
In honor of World Food Day:
"It's art on a plate... it's a different art form."
In "Why I Love Photographing Food" from PechaKucha Night Christchurch Vol. 25, Food photographer Meredith Dyer explains why she loves photographing food in ten reasons. Spoiler alert, some of the most exciting parts are the people!
"These days, arts and artists are mostly urban, this is not news, but whenever things are brought from the wilderness to the country, to the city, they are brought to make a point."
In "Rural Arts Activism" from PechaKucha Night Halifax Vol. 21, Associate Professor at NSCAD University Karin Cope presents the many creative opportunities in Halifax to explore the arts to enhance the lives of the members of her rural community.
Karen is a poet, sailor, photographer, videographer, writer, activist, and blogger. Her publications include scholarly works (Passionate Collaborations: Learning to Live with Gertrude Stein,) popular histories (Casting a Legend: The Story of the Lunenburg Foundry), poetry (What we’re doing to stay afloat), short stories, and substantial blogs. A founding member of Art and Activism at NSCAD, Cope is also a community activist on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.
"I want to destabilize the viewer in relation to the work."
In Confined Architectural Space and Psychological Unease from PechaKucha Night Buffalo Vol. 14, artist, sculpture, and professor, Gary Sczerbaniewicz shares his practice involving an insatiable fascination with interior architectural spaces that evoke a sense of psychological unease. This compulsion toward an aesthetics of anxiety leads him to fabricate confined space environments which include-scale shifts-using architectural models seamlessly blended into full-sized structures - into which the viewer is invited to physically enter and explore.
"One of the themes that keeps drawing me back to this sorta work is that of technological augmentation. Some interspecies collaboration can begin to suggest to us what it might be like to be technologically augmented humans..."
In "Art with Other Species" from PechaKucha Night Asheville Vol. 9, Egg Syntax explores the artistic, scientific, and all-together fascinating intersection of an art crossbred with nature. He surveys examples, themes, and implications of interspecies art from the simplest notions of using another species as a medium, to that of collaboration with another species. Prepare to have your mind blown.
"Photography gives me a medium to escape from daily routine life by creating something beautiful"
In Extreme Beauty from PechaKucha Night Tokyo Vol. 137, Fashion photographer Apple Chua shares in depth how she turned her passion into her career. She pushed the boundary of incorporating her hobby of hiking volcanoes into her commissioned works to create photos that comprised an epic and cinematic composition of colors, glamour, elegance, and whimsical femininity that is coupled with a futuristic look and inspirations from the renaissance era. That certain elusive quality became her signature style.
