Sandow Birk [artist]

By: Julian Chavez | August 24, 2009 | Ten by Ten

Sandow Birk is a Los Angeles artist and filmmaker whose works have addressed such topics as inner city life, surfing, prisons, civil rights and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Most recently he was a fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and a resident at the Cite Internationale des Artes in Paris. His next epic project will debut in fall of 2009.

What is the most important lesson you’ve ever learned?
That you can live your life how you want to live it, and that you don’t have to follow anyone else’s paths.

What book that you’ve read made a powerful impression on you?
So many books I’ve read have changed the way I look at things or opened up new ideas to me: Dante’s Inferno, obviously, Jose Saramago’s books, and Proust, which probably goes without saying. I remember very clearly reading Isaac Asimov’s Trilogy series when I was about 12 or 14, and it changed the whole way I thought about religion. I remember Nathanial Hawthorne having a big impact on me in high school. When I lived in Brazil, I read the classic authors in Portuguese, and that was really insightful — to read for the first time in a foreign language and to see how the language itself shapes the imagery and the metaphors. It taught me about my language, too — how it’s contained in its own parameters and limitations just like any other language. But so many books have been important to me. Probably as much as seeing certain artworks.

Describe your average Sunday morning.
I hate the weekends because it’s when everyone else has the day off. The beach is crowded and everyone is out there trying to have fun. I most like foggy winter weekdays when the kids are in school and everyone’s at work. That’s when I have fun. On a Sunday morning, I like to stay home and work all day and avoid the hubbub everywhere else. So I’m working, listening to the radio, reading the paper and glad that the e-mail box isn’t “pinging” all the time.

What individual was most influential during your formative years and how?
I had a high school surfing friend who I ended up traveling with for a few years. We spent a month living in a tree house on the beach in El Salvador one year, and then we tried to drive an old Jeep from L.A. to Rio de Janeiro to attend Carnival. The Jeep blew up in Central America, but we took the bus and trains and hitchhiked the rest of the way. It took eight months, but we actually made it to Rio the day before Carnival — almost dead broke. We got jobs in a surfboard factory the next day, and I ended up spending four years there. It was a pretty influential time.

What is your take on the current economic crisis?
I don’t have any informed opinion of it beyond the normal person’s, as it’s not something that I know very much about. It seems complicated and baffling and frightening all at the same time. I’m concerned with how it’s going to affect things in general in Los Angeles, but also how it’s going to affect me personally, and I just don’t know the answer to that. So, it’s going to be a nervous year for me. On top of that, the project I’m working on this year is potentially — OK, more than potentially — controversial. So, that’s a worry as well.

What are your thoughts on the overall importance of art in modern society?
I think that all depends on what “art” you’re talking about. If you mean art that includes music and movies, then I would say it’s a pretty large part of American society, but if you mean art like I think of the word normally — meaning the making of artworks, and the realm of galleries and museums — then I think it has a much smaller role even than it generally gets credit for. There’s the cliché of the artist and the poet as bellwethers of society, as leading the charge, and being loud and influential voices in society. I wish this were true, but I really think that the voices of artists, no matter how important their work is and what they are saying, are almost unheard by society at large, by the average person. Unfortunately, big news in the art world is pretty small news to the average citizen. Just look at how much space it gets in the newspaper. And if artists have it bad, just try to remember the last time you ever heard of a big stink being raised by poetry.

What advice would you give someone who wanted to follow your career path?
I guess someone would have to explain to me what exactly my career path is first. I’m not even sure myself what’s coming next or how I got to where I am now. I guess if I had to play the role of guru, my overly simplistic and pared-down message would be: Do work that’s interesting to you and do work that you believe in. Work hard. And when [your work is] done, try to get as many people as possible to see it. That’s what I try to do.

How do you decompress after a hard days work?
A lot of my life revolves around surfing, which is an activity that comes and goes based on the weather. When the waves are good, I spend a lot of time surfing, and I work in the afternoons and evenings. When the waves are bad I spend all my time working. Mostly I work at home, alone, for long hours. When the night comes I usually have to get out and be around people. I spend a lot of time in bars and going out to eat.

Describe your most vivid dream (or a recurring dream)?
I often have dreams where I’m speaking a different language, and that’s weird. It’s a language that I speak, Portuguese or Spanish, so it’s not like I’m speaking in tongues or anything miraculous, but it seems strange when I wake up that I was talking to everyone in a different language and everyone was answering. I bet it happens to a lot of people.

How do you define success?
The curse of succeeding is that it’s never enough for me; the definition keeps changing. Succeeding at one thing just makes me want to do a bigger project next or to challenge myself more or to engage in more complex discussions and to do bigger projects for bigger venues. I’m never satisfied with what I’ve done and I’m always worried about what I’m doing next, always doubting myself. It’s a precarious way of living. I guess I personally measure my past year as being successful in a few ways: how many days I’ve surfed, how many places I’ve traveled to and if I did good work. If I’ve worked hard and surfed hard and made the best work I can, and I’ve made it through another year financially, then I think it was a year well lived.

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