P e c h a K u c h a – V o l u m e 51
Volume 51 of PechaKucha took place on September 11, and was a special evening for me. I was last to present in a line-up of 12 Chicagoans, and the organizers of the show – the great Peter and Sharon Exley and Thorsten Bosch – told me that there was no better way to close the evening of thoughts on activism, absence, and presence than with my “most poignant of personal stories.” There was a lot of love in the room, and I am happy to have added to it and to have been a recipient.
This time around, I shared a story about family, identity, the guilt and shame that can follow unexpected death, and salvation through art making. It was a far more personal piece than I shared at volume 45, and it was well received. Always enjoyable to take the Martyrs’ stage, and exceptionally gratifying to see my art on a big screen.
See the presentation on my YouTube channel.
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C H I R P R a d i o – T h e F i r s t T i m e S e r i e s
Two weeks before my 41st birthday, I participated in CHIRP Radio’s First Time story telling series, in which I took the stage and talked about my nouna (godmother), horror movies, taking communion in the Greek Orthodox church as a kid, and feeling like the Antichrist while acting like The Fonz. My story was followed with a live cover by the excellent First Time Four band, performing a song I chose to accompany the reading.
Have a listen on my YouTube channel.
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P e c h a K u c h a – V o l u m e 4 5
For those of you unfamiliar with PechaKucha (Japanese for chit-chat), it is a story telling series with a guiding visual component that happens in a very particular format: you share 20 images, each projected on a screen for 20 seconds, and you talk. Your images, your words.
My 400 second presentation took me from quitting my day job and going to Paris, to seeing the evolution of Picasso’s first marriage through the lens of his paintings, on to making art with my kids, and finally from Radiohead and precooked lentils to art as salvation. I enjoyed it so much that I offered to make the poster for Volume 46 of PechaKucha, scheduled for this summer. You’ll see that here in the future. (The future is now.)
I am told that architects talk a lot, so this concept was developed by an architect (or two) in Tokyo well over a decade ago as a way to keep each other from babbling on indefinitely. (This may or may not be true.) PechaKucha now happens in hundreds of cities worldwide, and it’s a lot of damn fun. Volume 45 occurred on March 6th, 2018, at Martyrs’, an excellent venue here in Chicago. Below are a few photos of my contribution.
See the presentation on my YouTube channel.
D A M I E N J A M E S 