Reykjavík Grapevine - 13.04.2012, Síða 30

30
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2012
Sometime in early 2007, a fabulous
group of women were gathered in
a living room along with their fin-
est costumes and a pile of glow
strips for a night of fun in front of
the camera. After it was all done
and up on the internet, the one who
had planned it decided it was too
much fun to not do again. This is
how the Weird Girls project began
and the woman in question is their
undisputed spandex-queen, Kitty
Von-Sometime. For five years, she
has self-financed this video series
which brings together women to
an unknown location to perform
an unknown concept in unknown
costumes for a single day's film-
ing. Fifteen episodes and three
special projects later, she has been
summoned to China by Converse
to produce video projects for the
2012 limited colours campaign. We
sat down with her to get the whole
story on her viral success.
OUT OF THE COMFORT zONE AND
INTO THE FIRE
So what was the original inspiration
for the project?
When I was in the UK I mostly had male
friends. I was quite a tomboy growing
up. When I moved here it seemed to
switch and I mostly had female friends.
I was really surprised at the level of be-
ing asked, “does my bum look big in
this,” to more severe issues of confi-
dence, so it stemmed from that.
I noticed that when we would go to
a bar or a party, they would stand back
against the wall—typical wallflower
routine—and they were very conscious
of saying or doing anything that other
people wouldn’t think was cool. I’ve
been lucky enough to be raised in a
way that I was never that self-con-
scious. I was getting a bit bored of this
concern about other peoples’ opinion,
so I decided to shove them in front of
cameras.
It definitely feels from watching
your videos that the women are not
in their comfort zones. Is that an
important element?
It is really about that. That, in fact, is
the human aspect of this project. They
would never normally wear something
that tight, or be that exposed, or be in
front of a camera or even turn up to
meet a group of strangers they’ve nev-
er met before and try to make friends.
That’s something I find Icelanders shy
away from. The part about keeping the
women in the dark about the episode
concept until the day of shooting is also
a way of pushing their comfort. Nearly
every time I do an episode, there are
girls calling me up a couple of days
before going “I can’t do this,” totally
petrified because they don’t know what
they’re doing!
How important is it to you to have
cohesion between the visual and
musical aspects?
Very, actually! I tend to have a concept
first and find music that goes with that,
but the mood of the women and the
mood of the piece tend to evolve with
the music. I grew up in the first MTV
generation and I was very obsessive
whenever I was listening to music on
my Walkman. I would always run some
imaginary music video in my head, so
that’s why I really like using this format.
It’s part of why I do this and it’s how I’ve
always operated, just me alone with my
Walkman.
THE ICELANDIC WAY SpREADS
ACROSS ALL LANDS
Tell me about your trip to China.
I’m going in April sponsored by Con-
verse. They release four limited edition
colours of Chuck Taylors every year and
I’ve got two contrasting colours in each
Weird Girls | Kitty Von-Sometime
Hello, Kitty!
Reykjavík’s weirdest girl scored a free trip to China and told us how
“When I moved here it seemed to switch and
I mostly had female friends. I was really sur-
prised at the level of being asked, ‘does my
bum look big in this,’ to more severe issues of
confidence.”