One of our favorite video artists is Mr. Christian Sorensen Hansen. His intimate videos give viewers a mixture of inspiration, awe and pure joy that one rarely finds in a 3 minute story. We caught up with Christian while he was on the road in Europe and were happy to hear we will get to see him again in Seattle sometime this summer.
Photographs by Ms. Chantal Andrea.
At the moment I call LA home- at least, that's where my apartment is. I've been there for almost 2 years but if you total up the time I have spent in the city of Los Angeles, it probably doesn't add up to more than 10 months or a year. I travel constantly, up to Seattle, around the states, and abroad on projects and I'm writing this interview now from a cafe in Berlin. This spring and summer I'll be back in the northwest quite a bit and who knows what will happen from there. I feel like I'm constantly on some sort of adventure.
I've grown up around creative people. My dad's an art director, my mom a writer. When I was younger they ran an ad agency in Pioneer Square called SRH. A lot of my early years were spent going with them to client meetings and shoots. There were always cameras around the house and I started making movies on my dads VHS camcorder back when that was high technology. VHS movies turned into Hi8 skate videos, then MiniDV skate videos sent me to film school, and now it's all SSD. Today my work consists of a smattering of music videos, commercial, and documentary work.
Generally things are rather quiet for me in the morning. I find I'm most productive and creative first thing so I do my best to take advantage of that by eliminating any distractions. I'll take a walk around the neighborhood with coffee or sit and write for a while. When I have a project that I'm focused on that week or that month I'll try and get as much done in the morning as possible- editing, writing, what have you.
At this very moment I'm learning some German. It's a fascinating language and obviously not all that dissimilar from English- or the other way around. That however, comes more from the necessity of needing to communicate with the world around me. I'm constantly working on trying to slow-down and unplug. So much time is spent at the computer or wrapped up purely in the day to day- my goal is to break that cycle and strike a balance with a state of being that is more in touch spiritually and to my environment.
The list of people that inspire me is always changing but I'm constantly finding inspiration in those that are closest to me. The work that my friends make is the work that always blows my mind. There is so much to be said for knowing back-story and the person behind a certain photograph or piece of music. It gives that work infinitely more depth- it's that authenticity and intimate knowledge of a piece that gets me excited.
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