Keelayjamss Vines are among some of the most daring out there. (Hes the Viner who Tweeted his password and let strangers take over his account.) In this interview, Keelayjams shares his very (very!) strong opinions on street art, advertising, and why you shouldnt care about your follower count. Keelayjams, or Kyle M. F. Williams, grew up in Massachusetts and currently lives in New York City with his wife Erin and their two cats. He went to college for painting and works for a clothing company designing mens accessories, yet on the web, he has created Vines that defy genre. Keelayjams talked to us about choosing to create what he wants without worrying about feedback or popularity, and his unusual decision to reject corporate money when it comes to his Vine account.
Tribeca: Your website reveals that youve made digital collages, sculptures, paintings and even music (with accompanying videos.) What advantages does Vine have as an artistic medium, and is it your preferred medium? Kyle M. F. Williams: I like the immediacy of Vine. My workflow with Vine is usually pretty fast, I have a little visual idea in the morning, sit down for a while and conceptualize how to make it real, gather supplies and shoot the Vine that afternoon. Ive always loved art and music that either looked or sounded half-finished, like artists sketches and musicians demos, and because of the time limit, interface restrictions, and low-resolution of Vine, I feel like I can just crank out these visual ideas in that "medium quality" look that Im comfortable with and release it into the feed and then move onto the next idea. Its not my preferred medium but I think that its influencing what I want to be doing in the future, like a long-form cinematic kinda thing.
Tribeca: Your latest Vines involve pasting graphics over real-time footage (ex: "Sneaking Lindsay Lohan into my apt with a very large rope", "Installed a new security system", "Im in a fight with a skeleton"). Knowing that Vine doesnt allow for any editing, how are you able to accomplish this (or is it a secret?) KW: I wanted to expand on creating surreal Vines that occur in a realistic space but I wanted to push the content towards something that would be almost impossible to produce. Ive spent a good amount of money on supplies for Vines in the past and decided to chill out on the purchases and figure out a way to achieve some sort of bonkers scenario economically. I caved to stop-motion. Im not a fan of cutesy, whimsical stop-motion. I thought I could make it a little creepier and less cartoony by grounding it in real life.
The public Vines take a lot of courage. Im not super comfortable going outside in the city and making a scene.
The "Im in a fight..." Vine was created by filming raw video with a DSLR, exporting 6-seconds of that footage to individual JPEGs, loading them into Photoshop and manipulating each one of the 60-or-so frames with superimposed elements like a horse head, a Shia LaBeouf head, a koala head, and a basketball all emerging from a human skeleton body. These individual collages were printed out on sheets of paper and shot stop-motion-style with the Vine app. Sound effects were looped in Garageband and played on an external speaker aimed at the phone doing the Vining. Pretty intense set-up, but much more cost-effective than actually buying a human skeleton, koala head, basketball, horse head, and creating a life-cast of Shia LaBeouf.
"Sneaking Lindsay Lohan..." and "Installed a new security system" were done in the same frame-by-frame Photoshop edit style but were shot using stop-motion off the screen of an iPad with a piece of frosted plexiglass over it to soften the pixels that often pop up on shitty Vines where people record their computer screens. The frosted plexi just blurs the pixels a touch so it doesnt look so obvious.
I think the words "Lindsay Lohan" floating in a lake is funny and cool to look at. Thats all.
Tribeca: Youve done some wonderful Vines in public spaces that combine pop culture icons with surreal imagery (drawing some parallels, I think, to Banksy). How were you able to make Vines such as "Amanda Bynes Graffiti" or "Shia LeBeouf hit me up" without interruption? And whats the significance of having the Vine orchestrated and filmed in public? KW: The public Vines take a lot of courage. Im not super comfortable going outside in the city and making a scene. I certainly dont want to interact with strangers or make them uncomfortable or leave a mess. For these larger-scale public pieces I try to shut off the world, focus on the shot, bang it out as efficiently as possible, upload the video, clean-up, and peace out. "Amanda Bynes Graffiti" was easy: I just had headphones in and listened to some tunes while I worked, muting the rest of the city. "Shia LeBeouf hit me up" was a little tougher and took an assistant and two takes.
Its cool here on the Upper East Side because its not really an "artistic" kinda neighborhood like Williamsburg or Bushwick. Things are clean and people are too busy with their own business to give a shit if youre sticking white bread slices to a brick wall or placing letters on an abandoned movie theater marquee. I think I only do these public spaces Vines to give my feed a little bit of visual variety. I live in a tiny studio apartment and Im pretty sure every inch of it has been featured in a Vine at some point during the last year. The outdoor stuff is almost an excuse for me to vary my feed or maybe to feel like Im getting some exercise or something. The pieces are temporary and exist only for the Vine.
I dont like permanent street art. I like the process if the piece is interesting, but awful "social commentary" type street art that just sits on a wall until its washed off is the worst. I guess Im doing the anti-social-commentary street art by simply using the name of some high-paid celeb
