It is no secret that attention spans have been ebbing for some years now, particularly since the advent of the Internet and social media. TV producers and presenters, for example, frequently go for sound and visual bites designed to titillate and grab the viewer’s interest. That may be what makes the media industry tick but it does not nurture the ability to concentrate on the subject matter for very long.

That inescapable fact makes the forthcoming PechaKucha event at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium (in Tel Aviv (April 7-8, two shows each evening) the ideal vehicle for providing audiences with entertainment that is distilled and free of lightweight filling material. It also tends to keep the artists in question fully focused and on their toes.

PechaKucha began life in Japan in 2003. The name in Japanese translates as “chit-chat” or “blah-blah,” although that does not mean the artistic content is not worth the audience’s hard-earned ticket money. Basically, this is a storytelling vehicle in which a presenter shows 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary each.

The format has been tweaked over the years and now also includes artists appearing live on a stage with acts that, simply, last 20 times 20 seconds. That comes out at six minutes and 40 seconds per artist, who may be standup comedians, musicians, actors, or photographers, or anyone who can strip away the dross and pare down their offerings to the bare bones that still do the compelling business.

The artist’s roster and artistic content of PechaKucha is overseen by Anat Safran and Itay Mautner.

“Anat brought it with her from Japan, and I joined her in the first edition 17 years ago,” says Mautner. The import has proven its worth and clearly suits not only this fast-moving day and age, but it is also appropriate for Israelis who generally just want to get a move on. “Yes, I think that’s right,” Mautner concurs. He does, however, make a salient point about how things have panned out, in the world in general, since the event made it over here. “Six minutes and 40 seconds when we began 17 years ago, and six minutes and 40 seconds today that’s a completely different time dimension. Six minutes and 40 seconds today is ages, it is really long.”

We live, Mautner notes, amidst a very different zeitgeist. “Everything is so fast now. For many people today 20 seconds is a lot of time.” There is, he says, empirical evidence for that notion. “There has been research conducted on how long people spend, on average, with an Instagram picture, or on Pinterest or Facebook, which are image-driven. They spend 2, 3, 4 or 5 seconds, max, with them.”

And there I was, someone who writes about art and culture in general, well into adulthood by the time the online information world came into being, wondering how an artist crams succinct visual messages into 20 seconds.

“Suddenly you have to get people to sit and watch a single image for 20 seconds. Six minutes and 40 seconds can last forever,” Mautner laughs. No doubt Albert Einstein would have pointed a seasoned and reasoned finger at the relativity of the temporal continuum.

There’s no arguing with the facts on the ground. Safran, Mautner, and PechaKucha have come a long way since 2007, four years after the inaugural event was held in Japan and three years after a number of European cities began hosting their own versions.

“We started out at Saloona in Jaffa with an audience of 200,” Mautner recalls.

As the show attracted ever-rising ticket sales it took on a nomadic existence to cater for uptick and also as a premeditated creative choice.

“We kept on moving around. We intentionally went for a different venue each time. Back then the event was held four times a year. Then we moved to Hangar 11 [in the Tel Aviv Port]. We had audiences of 2,000 and we held it twice on the same evening.” That’s a whopping great increase. And it didn’t stop there.

The artistic director could see the proof of the format pudding with his own eyes. “In those days there weren’t a lot of online sales. We used to sell tickets, physically, at a number of cafés in Tel Aviv. We’d start selling tickets at 8 a.m., and there’d be a line of people waiting from 7:30.” That’s a pretty unsocial hour in Tel Aviv climes. “It was crazy,” Mautner exclaims.

All told, the 2024 edition will be seen by some 10,000 culture consumers with the program starting at 6:30 and 9 each evening, and lasting 75 minutes. There are 10 artists on the roster, with Safran and Mautner stepping in betwixt each slot with some commentary and explanatory addenda.

Mautner, as a veteran of the local scene – among his many other high-profile gigs, Mautner serves as joint artistic director of the Israel Festival – has accrued a wealth of experience in artistic presentation and curatorial work. He says the condensed format offers a boon for the performer and helps to keep them and, by extension, the audience homed in on the real deal. “It is really interesting, how you end up with the bone and get rid of all the unnecessary fat. Everything has a core. I think the constraint of six minutes 40 forces the presenters and the onlookers to concentrate on what is truly important.” That’s not just a significant lesson for performing artists to take on board. “That’s great training for life too,” Mautner observes. “There’s so much noise, so many things that overlap, but they aren’t very important. There are very few things that are really important.”

That’s a refreshing notion to take in and put into practice – and one which all the onstage participants in PechaKucha have to apply. Mautner, unsurprisingly, comes up with a few examples from this year’s cast.

“There is Michal Chelvin who is an amazing photographer. She has already published four photography books.” Chelvin has been there and done plenty of that, including setting the aesthetic tone for large-scale fashion shows.

Naturally, she accumulated a mammoth body of work over the years. “She has tens of thousands of pictures,” Mautner notes. “How do you choose from all that? How do you decide what is meaningful? That’s a fundamental question.” And one which informs the work of any artist and, in particular, when they have to streamline their act to PechaKucha proportions.

“We ask the artists to say what is important now, at this moment. Life is dynamic. Nothing stays the same. Michal Chelvin had to decide that, at this point in time, in early April, it is important to talk about a particular thing. She has to take the 20 frames she has at her disposal and come up with some kind of statement.” Chelvin’s berth in next week’s program, loosely described, places figures that generally inhabit the margins of society, front and center.

Event to feature eclectic artists 

Safran and Mautner have gone for an eclectic spread of artists from a range of styles and genres. The trauma of October 7 makes an appearance too. The True Twins duo – Itamar Toren and Almog Sela in real life – best known for creating the opening sequence to the Hazarot TV comic-drama series will shed some behind-the-scenes light on a documentary about the terrorist attack. Muhammad Abu Salame and Yonatan Daskal take the genre fusion route and also reference the Hamas atrocities. Their contribution encompasses music and lighting in a visual-musical work that addresses aspects of life here in the wake of the attacks.

And there’s an emotive documentary presentation in store from Hadas Noiman who goes in search of her long-lost father and learns some painful lessons about relationships, loneliness, old age, and life.

An entertaining, thought-provoking, and succinct time is on the cards for all.

For more information: pechakuchatlv.com/