Philosophy and Management: Pecha Kucha Polaroids and Photographs

Laurent Ledoux asked me to help him collecting images for his Pecha Kucha presentation of the Philosophy and Management seminars. The speech was given at the Brussels Pecha Kucha Night of September 2009, held at the Recyclart centre.

It was only about choosing twenty images. However, the subject of the speech inspired me to approach the task in more thoughtful way. I enthusiastically said yes to the offer. Here is how I have ‘curated’ the images, thanks to Jefolo, Chris Jordan, kide, QundL, Benjamin Sandri who generously let me use their photographs and to Nancy L. Stockdale, Thomas van der Vlis and Compton.m who published their Polaroids under a Creative Commons license.

The axiom of efficiency through competition is questioned during the speech. Here is a very clever representation by kide, Germany.

“Pecha Kucha (sometimes referred as ‘20×20’) is in Japanese the sound of conversation (which literally translates as “bla bla”). It  is a series of show-and-tell evenings for designers, architects, artists and creatives, started by Klein Dytham architecture in Tokyo in 2003 and now in 200 and plus cities worldwide. The concept: each speaker has 6 minutes 40 sec. for a presentation which contains 20 images. Each image is on screen for only 20 seconds. No more, no less. 20 images x 20 seconds each. Tempo, story, tension, show-and-tell”  [http://pechakucha.architempo.net/]. Here is the international Pecha Kucha Night website where you can find a list of all events. I have never worked on a Pecha Kucha presentation before. I had to give it a try as I’m always interested in new techniques of communication.

One of the image showed at the Pecha Kucha Night of Brussels, some bikes photographed by Thomas van der Vlis, the Netherlands. It illustrates in my opinion very well the concept of ‘voluntary simplicity’, introduced during the Philo and Management presentation.

The second reason why this mini-project was so interesting is the mission of the Philosophy and Management organisation. “Help leaders address the challenges of their organization through interventions involving the participation of professional philosophers [...] Philosophers don’t hesitate to question the foundations and ideologies of managerial practices, especially when the latter claims in good faith its neutrality, pragmatism and ‘ethics’. The main objective of the Philo and Management is to help leaders not to pick up the wrong problems, but to correctly define them and elaborate solutions.” The program, with its multidisciplinary dimension and its potential social impact, is perfectly in line with the mission of Curated Matter. I spoke with Laurent Ledoux, the administrator of Philo and Management , and was impressed by his commitment to engage a true conversation between business leaders and  philosophical practitioners. The theme of the 2009 -2010 series of seminars is “Question time”. The seminars challenge one by one the axioms of capitalism defined by Christian Arnsperger, and by doing so propose new types of freedoms for everyone.

The form of capitalism we are accustomed today assumes that material resources and desires are infinite. We know very well it is not the case. Every two minutes, the United States consume 28,000 42-gallon barrels of oils, as depicted in this image from Chris Jordan, courtesy of Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles. The system  is clearly not sustainable.

To prepare the presentation, Laurent explained me what he wanted to say in his speech. I then came back to him with a sample of pictures I thought could fit well with the subject. Which inspired him for his second version of the narrative. He was very passionate about the proposal and gave me the green light to take care of the visuals and to contact the artists. It was risky knowing it is not the most conventional one for a presentation addressing a large audience. I chose to use Polaroids, big credits for the authors and pictures that don’t fill the entire space and that are not always very sleek. Let me explain these decisions more in more details.

Photography of a wave by QundL, France. The wave is the symbol of the Philosophy and Management series of seminars for 2009 – 2010.

Big credits for authors

It seems a detail but the choice was controversial. I have been advised to display the credits in vertical on the border of the images, or to display them at the end of the presentation on one screen. This approach doesn’t distract the audience from the images and might also be preferred by many artists who work for their pictures to be seen, not their names. That being said, I felt this was not the right decision for our presentation. A central part of the speech was about how individuals from different backgrounds played an important role in shaping the theme of the Philo and Management seminars. The discourse was centred on people, and how they can reclaim their freedom in today’s social-economic context. This is why I chose to use Polaroids; they symbolize freedom because they are cheap, impulsive and personal. It was thus very natural to draw attention to the people who contributed with their pictures, not to hide their name but at the opposite to make very explicit the connections between the images and their authors. This is why the credits are big, in black and white. The images are not treated as anonymous, they are not a commodity but are personal contributions from people around the world.

Big credits are also a way to demonstrate that photographs have not just been picked up on the Internet. I contacted every artist and explained them the project, requesting their explicit approval when required. I believe that this approach is much more collaborative and enriching for everyone.

Images not filling the entire space

It is understandable that many Pecha Kucha presentations use full screen images. Images are the central part of the events and it is only natural to show them on a larger scale so that everyone can see them clearly. It is also a way to make a bigger impact, to submerge the audience with colours and evocative pictures. I decided however to take another direction for some of the pictures. Full screen images saturate the space, they grasp the attention of the audience but don’t give them the occasion to step back, at least symbolically. It is sensible for a philosophical presentation to give the opportunity for the audience to take some distance and think by themselves. A full screen treatment would also have made difficult the usage of the very recognizable Polaroid white frames. Polaroids are not digital information but real objects with a frame, a texture and a size. This makes them perhaps look like miniature canvases. Even if the Polaroids were digitalized in this presentation, it seemed to me appropriate to give a sense of their materiality by displaying them with their white frame, on a limited scale, which I realize is still an outrageous real-fake. I hope this approach will not be confused with what we currently see in large marketing campaigns, using also Polaroid white frames but with the aim to give some personality to  fake Polaroid images, coming in fact from corporate image databases.

On a more competitive note, if many presenters use full screen images, they might lose their punch. Playing the difference might pay off.

Non sleek images

As you have probably noticed reading this paper, I wanted to approach the presentation as a mini-curation. Which is a very different approach from for example approaching it as a piece of graphical design or marketing communication. One consequence is the treatment of the images. I decided with Laurent to start the presentation with an image he scanned from a children book. The book evocated the philosophical questions of his early childhood, “Dis, maman, pourquoi j’existe?” by Oscar Brenifier and Delphine Durand, Editions Nathan. The classical graphical design or marketing impulsion would have been to obtain instead a ‘good quality’ image of the book. It is obvious that the image has been scanned and that it has not been edited by a professional. And this is why I wanted to keep it as it is, making only the minimum adjustments to make it clearly visible on a projector. Why be shy about the fact it is a scanned image? Why hide it is a personal and spontaneous appropriation of it? These are the reasons why the image fits so well in the presentation. This approach is more and more fashionable these days, is a typical curatorial one, aiming at preserving the original meaning of cultural artefacts and conveying the context they come from. That being said, independently of this rather pretentious intellectual argument, we are only talking about using a scanned image from a book.

The same argument can probably explain the revival of the Polaroid media that happened the last few years. I consider that the Polaroids I chose for this presentation are aesthetically very interesting and demonstrate true artistic talent. But few years ago, the Polaroid media was perceived as cheap, of ‘poor quality’ (compared to other photographic techniques) and banal because it was used by the masses. It is only recently that we have realized how the media was also personal and able to capture instant emotion. In a way, Polaroids are the opposite of sleek marketing and corporate images (and this is probably why so many marketing campaigns use them today, to hide their lack of personality). I appreciate punchy ‘start-up’ presentations and smart graphical designs but image driven approaches such as the Pecha Kucha Nights are thankfully not limiting themselves to this single type of imageries. There is much more diversity in terms of image philosophies and treatments than that.

The George Peabody Library in Baltimore, photographed by Compton.m, USA. Libraries are powerful symbols of how sharing, and not possessing, can also benefit all of us. It is one of the axiom of capitalism challenged at the Philosophy and Management seminars.

I tried to adopt a curatorial approach for this mini-exercise, understanding and challenging the underlying assumptions of the format, not only picking up anonymous pictures but involving their authors. I presented artefacts that I believe are not only greatly contributing to the message of Philosophy and Management, but are also powerful on their own. I attempted to preserve their integrity and uniqueness. I wanted to document this process as thoroughly as I could, so please let me know if you have any remarks.

A flower shop photographed by Nancy L. Stockdale, USA. The contrast between the rather dry building and the eccentric DIY flower shop is sharp. Maybe an invitation to make business differently…