By Nadine Moedt (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: February 18, 2015
UFV’s first Pecha Kucha night, themed “doing what we love,” found an auditorium filled with enthusiastic students and community members.
Pecha Kucha is a fast-paced presentation style where speakers show 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide; the MC describes it as being similar to a TED talk, with a focus on “what inspires us as humans, [and] what inspires us to create.”
The night started with a reception in the S’eliyemetaxwtexw art gallery, and featured a mix of branding projects focused on creating a sense of community, as well as typography portraits by UFV’s graphic and digital design students. Attendees were able to bid on the portraits for the duration of the event.
The presentation featured 16 speakers, whose backgrounds varied widely; entrepreneurs, filmmakers, artists, and museum curators all spoke on how to find your dream job to the backdrop of PowerPoint presentations.
UFV grad Alisha Reddens spoke on her art, which focuses on a childhood afflicted with epilepsy. Inspired by the artist and sculptor Louis Bourgeois, the founder of confessional art, Reddens works in an autobiographical medium, centring on a fear of losing control of one’s body and a fear of the unknown. She hopes with her work to raise awareness about epilepsy.
Other presenters included Cherlandra Estrada, who talked about her initial “erroneous career path” and how she “stroked and spattered [her] way through self-doubt” through a transition from a job in sales to a full-time artist. Estrada now works for the Reach gallery as a curator, among other passions.
The MC entertained throughout with interjections of overly-enthused introductions: “What up, hometown hero!”
Several presenters used their time on stage to instruct students on how to go about finding and pursuing their passion. Mike Boronwski, who works at the District of Mission in civic engagement and corporate initiatives, inverted the claims of many of the speakers by arguing that we should not do what we love as a career, but rather “bring what [you] love into what [you] do.” If we do what we love as a day job, we will “grind what we love into dirt” and be unable to use it as a hobby or means of pleasure.
Despite the MC’s claim that the night had “brought the creative community of Abbotsford” together, many of the presenters had a background of marketing, slick entrepreneurship and digital storytelling. Quotable quotes were quoted — “The most important brand I’ve ever built is myself” — and success stories were told with an air of self-congratulation. One presenter began by saying that when she was growing up her “dreams were bigger than most,” and left the audience to watch unattributed “inspirational” quotes — the type of stuff written in gel pen on a 10-year-old’s schoolbooks. “I must be a mermaid — I have no fear of depths and great fear of the shallows,” said one. “She believed she could so she did,” another went.
Some presentations were more entertaining and amusing than instructive, which kept the night from being overly self-congratulatory. Krista Hesketh, otherwise known as “the Blonde Jedi,” spoke to her various Star Wars crushes and her love of connecting with other Star Wars fans online through her popular YouTube channel. Her slides displayed a mixture of screenshot selfies and pictures of Star Wars fandom.
The more homegrown presentations escaped the slickness of the marketing; Simran Bains talked about blueberries and her work at Westberry Farms, which has been in her family for generations.
The night was a success on many counts: crackers with boursin were served, buzzwords were dropped, and networking occurred. Abbotsford mayor Henry Braun even showed up — or, as the MC put it, “HB [was] in the house.” However, for the creative person who hopes to one day do what they love, the night proved to be a little too careerist and slick to fully address the individual’s search for life purpose and passion.
