China’s Weird Girls Project

The freedom to express oneself artistically might not be mentioned specifically in the Declaration of Independence, but it’s right up there with the pursuit of happiness and the need to be oneself at all costs.

To paraphrase the great Oscar Wilde, to be oneself is rather important as “everyone else is already taken.”

Pushing this concept perhaps even a little bit too far by more conservative standards is the Weird Girls Project, which has been chosen as Converse China’s sponsored international art event of 2012.

Kitty Von Sometime, the group leader, has planned this project since last November, when she made her first exploratory trip to China.

Her motivation was to examine the reaction of Chinese women to the unusual art project and offer them an outlet and escape from conventional behaviors; a stepping out of the box, if you will.

“The concept of freeing women from daily behavior is a particularly enjoyable and challenging idea to engage with in China, and the production of such large-scale events with a huge language barrier is also an adventure in itself,” said Kitty.

The project, which will commence in March and be released next July, will consist of five episodes filmed in different locations throughout China.

Women local to each specific area will participate in each episode.

The impetus behind the sponsorship of the project is to encourage the letting go of personal boundaries, and it is an ongoing art experiment.

The Weird Girls Project is a dynamic artistic force that evolves and becomes stronger with each episode.

Each episode involves both original participants and new members as well, and lasts for three months.

Each event is tinged with an air of mystery, with participants knowing as little as is possible about the event except for the date, theme, location and costumes.

Filming always occurs during these episodes, and the focus is to catch reactions to the unknown and unexpected (and there is plenty of that, as evidenced by the included photos).

How the women react, improvise and morph within their costumes teaches participants about the power of self combined with the strength of blending as a group.

The women are not actresses or models and they come from different age groups and varying backgrounds. They are strangers to each other before the day of the scheduled event.

The Weird Girls Project is four years old and has hosted 13 episodes and 2 special performances.

Fluid, collaborative life is the concept of the Weird Girls Project, and the more one knows about it, the less weird and the more self-elevating it becomes.