Transcript

1. Art/Official

   Let's start with Mediamatic, since it's the one with more of a story behind it — a freestyle rap performance is not a small detail to leave out. Q1: How did this one come about — were you invited to do Pecha Kucha Amsterdam that night, or did you put yourself forward for it?

2. Artist

   This was the first pecha kucha I did. I went to a lot of mediamatic events before this and knew about the event. I think a friend of mine, cant remember the name, but does the 'pop up city' thing on the internet and I think he was the organizer and suggested I try it out. SO decided to try it out.

3. Art/Official

   That's a good origin story to have on record — you'd already been in Mediamatic's orbit for a while, and it came through a personal connection rather than a cold application. Worth noting: "Pop-Up City" is Mediamatic co-founder territory, so if your friend is connected to that, it's a real, findable thread — not just a vague memory. We can try to pin down the name later if it matters for the record; no rush now. Q2: Pecha Kucha's format is 20 slides, 20 seconds each — how did you actually use that structure with the Digital City Series? Did you build the slide sequence deliberately to match some rhythm in the rap, or did the images and the freestyle come together more loosely, in the moment?

4. Artist

   I think I had like 14 cities done. so I used the first 6 slide to introduce and talk about the project and then the last 14 was one city for each 20 second slide, where I rapped on. I wasn't sure what to do for the beat, so had my friend Rik there with a djembe and he made a hip hop beat for me to rap to.

5. Art/Official

   That's a vivid structure — six slides of setup, then fourteen cities each getting their own twenty-second verse, live over a djembe beat Rik was inventing on the spot rather than something pre-recorded. That's a genuinely different kind of performance risk than most Pecha Kucha presenters take on — most people are just clicking through slides talking, not rapping live to a percussionist reacting in real time. Q3: Anything happen that night worth keeping on record — how the room reacted, anything Rik said afterward, any specific moment from the six-city stretch or the freestyle that's stuck with you?

6. Artist

   It went off pretty well, like the mediamatic article said. Rik was happy with the beat, I was a bit nervous in the introduction part, but went smooth with the freestyling. I do remember that I went up 3rd for the evening.

7. Art/Official

   Good detail — third up in the lineup, nerves in the setup section that dissolved once the freestyling actually started. That's a real account, distinct from Mediamatic's own external description of "the man who stole the show." Q4: Looking back now, where does this one sit in the arc of the practice — was Mediamatic 2009 a turning point in how you started presenting the Digital City Series, a one-off experiment, or something else entirely?

8. Artist

   was a bit of a start, so went on to do the 3 other pecha kucha in Hamburg, Shenzhen, and San francisco. the Amsterdam one had the biggest and most enthusiatic crowd. maybe they also understood english better than Hamburg and Shenzhen. was also the only one I had a djembe player making the beat for me, the others I had a recorded beat I made, but the djembe worked better. the other ones were good too, but the San francisco one was not so good and thats when I stopped. not sure why, but came to learn that SF was where they started doing them along with Japan, so the one I was doing was like the 40th edition, and just seemed that the enthsiasm was a bit over, whoe knows what the original ones were like, but by the time I did it the audience did seem to hyped. Also the sound dude at that place was mad at something and not helpful at all, I played my beat and rapped, but the dude kept background music going while I was rapping. not sure, seemed like he was not happy with the place 330 ritch street, but was a let down, so didn't look to do more. wish I would have recorded though.

9. Art/Official

   That's the real shape of it — Mediamatic in 2009 as the strongest version, largely because of a live djembe reacting to you in real time rather than a fixed track, and then a slow fade through Hamburg, Shenzhen, and finally San Francisco at 330 Ritch Street, where an uncooperative sound engineer and a crowd worn down by decades of Pecha Kucha (SF being one of the two original cities, alongside Tokyo) made for a flat ending — flat enough that it's where you stopped. That "wish I'd recorded it" is a real, honest note to have on file too, distinct from anything a write-up could tell us. One more thing worth asking while we're on this thread, since it connects directly: did you perform under the Besco name at any of these — Mediamatic, or the later ones — or did that alias come from a separate context entirely?

10. Artist

    no, under my artist name, on another note, I used to be B Major as a rap name, but years ago met a guy from SF too, that went by B Major and was on some big bay area rap albums, so changed the main rap name to Besco

11. Art/Official

    Good context, and a genuinely useful parallel to the Bernard/Bernard-John-Bolter-IV situation — same pattern, different name: you moved off "B Major" once you learned a real Bay Area rap artist already used it, and landed on Besco instead. That's worth keeping in the informal record even though it's not going anywhere public yet — it's exactly the kind of detail that explains why a name exists, not just that it does. That completes the four-question sequence for Mediamatic.