Open Thread: legendary artist, photographer and film-maker Thomas Campbell answering your questions on creativity, skateboarding, surfing, and anything else.
Open Thread: legendary artist, photographer and film-maker Thomas Campbell answering your questions on creativity, skateboarding, surfing, and anything else.
Last year’s conversation with the great Thomas Campbell is already one of THE classic Looking Sideways chats.
As I put it at the time, ‘Thomas is one of surfing and skateboarding’s most important influences thanks to classic films such as The Seedling, and a singular aesthetic and approach that has an outsized influence on what it means to be creative in our world’. Listen below if you haven’t yet checked it out:
Now, to kick off 2024, Thomas has agreed to answer YOUR questions in a specially recorded-episode of the show.
Here’s how it’s going to work. Use this Open Thread to ask Thomas any question you like about art, film-making, his creative career, or even what it was like travelling around the UK in a van with Skin, Cardiel and Gonz back in ’91.
I will then sit down with Thomas to record a special episode of the podcast, during which I’ll put these questions to him, and which will be released in a couple of weeks.
Plus! How’s this for a brilliant prize for paid subscribers? Thomas has generously offered an exclusive signed print as a prize for the best question by a paid subscriber in the comments.
(This contest is only open to paid subscribers, as are all Open Thread contests featuring prizes from my pals at Yeti, Danner, Db, Patagonia, Finisterre and Goodrays, although anybody can ask a question.)
Use the button below to ask a question - looking forward to reading everybody’s contributions!
Sick prize, sick opportunity to ask a burning question to someone I’d love to hear an answer from. Cheers for this, Matt.
We live in a world that demands everyone needs to take a side in an argument (no matter how knowledgable they are on the subject), and that everything is at risk of having political or social context adding to it. With that in mind, do you thing this is impacting the creativity of “art for art’s sake”?
Rick Ruben talks about music opening a portal. I get this, it works me. For me music allows me to get into a creative flow. When I’m writing I will often put on the Sprout House Band, in particular Spanish Flowers. Do you listen to tunes as part of your visual creative process? If so how do you use music to make your work.
Hey, loved this episode, thanks both. For Thomas, given that you say your art started from a pretty "untalented place", what's your relationship to your older pieces of work now? Can you look at them without wanting to improve them? And do you have any favourite pieces around the house now? Thanks Sam
In your interview with matt for his podcast you talk about the naïveté of a bands first album and how that can often be their greatest work . I found that really interesting,I was wondering if you follow learned methods or paths these days when you set out on a new project or do you find that in fact you have to unpick all you know to try and get back to that first feeling?
Essentially are you are a big planner or fuck it I’m sure it’ll be ok when we get going kind of guy ?
Do you think the air game has ruined surfing just a little?
I mean skateboarding and snowboarding have always suited a bit of a punk rock attitude and can handle the aggression but to me surfings soul gets a little dirty the minute the fins leave the water.
I’m probably in the minority here but I’d be interested in your thoughts on where surfing is headed.
& finally, do you want some music for your film.. 😉
Carving is the foundation of good surfing and skating. Why has no one devoted a film to its evolution? Perhaps a good carve is too intangible to analyse?
Would be interesting to hear Thomas’s POV on the algorithm. Has he noticed the things that people like and are responding to from a creative perspective being shifted by the way the internet serves up things to us? Is there still room for real discovery, vs “you liked this before so here’s another thing like it”? How does his art find its way to people who love it in this day and age? Also, how does he keep or develop his personal style / voice / taste in the face of the great bland "internet culture”— or does he have advice for young artists coming up in the algorithm era on evolving theirs?
I'm so looking forward to Yi-Wo, especially perhaps the trailed surf mat section with Dave Rastovitch and Lauren Hill - there's something magic about that out of control feeling of a mat. Your films always seem to capture the beauty in the margins and the chaos, and an overriding feeling of joy. Do you think there's a danger that the joy of irreverence is becoming lost in a homogenising surf culture?
In the late 90’s there was a real overlap in the Venn diagrams of surfing, skating and snowboarding with a healthy cross over culture. Since then there’s been a real demarcation between board sports with very few creatives avoiding being funnelled into specific pigeon holes, even within surfing and skating - so what keeps your output diverse enough to cover everything from cutting edge skating through to classic logging?
There is a difference between being creative, and the type of creativity that defines or that crosses over and interconnects subcultures. How do you nurture the conditions and space that allow for that second type of creativity?
Sorry I’m late to the party! If it’s not too late I would love to know how you choose what creative projects to prioritise? As an artist, film maker, photographer and more (father!) you must have a lot of ideas, projects, brands and others all asking for energy and attention. How do you choose what to pursue and what to save for later?
I hope I still have time, you talked about politics being owned, which seems to be more evident than ever. Are we living in the time of “ownership” where even ideas are the folly of the Uber rich. And how do we take them back? That for me is what skating was about, a group of us taking back our energy, ideas and endeavours.
Big thanks to Matt and Thomas for this. My question to Thomas is, what keeps you curious? And how important is curiosity to your practice.
Sick prize, sick opportunity to ask a burning question to someone I’d love to hear an answer from. Cheers for this, Matt.
We live in a world that demands everyone needs to take a side in an argument (no matter how knowledgable they are on the subject), and that everything is at risk of having political or social context adding to it. With that in mind, do you thing this is impacting the creativity of “art for art’s sake”?
How has fatherhood changed you?
Are there new things you want to try in art? And what are they?
Rick Ruben talks about music opening a portal. I get this, it works me. For me music allows me to get into a creative flow. When I’m writing I will often put on the Sprout House Band, in particular Spanish Flowers. Do you listen to tunes as part of your visual creative process? If so how do you use music to make your work.
Hey, loved this episode, thanks both. For Thomas, given that you say your art started from a pretty "untalented place", what's your relationship to your older pieces of work now? Can you look at them without wanting to improve them? And do you have any favourite pieces around the house now? Thanks Sam
If you were approached to make a film with a more than healthy budget, what story would you tell or highlight that is current in surfing.
People, location, music.
In your interview with matt for his podcast you talk about the naïveté of a bands first album and how that can often be their greatest work . I found that really interesting,I was wondering if you follow learned methods or paths these days when you set out on a new project or do you find that in fact you have to unpick all you know to try and get back to that first feeling?
Essentially are you are a big planner or fuck it I’m sure it’ll be ok when we get going kind of guy ?
Cheers
Ben
One more for Thomas..
Do you think the air game has ruined surfing just a little?
I mean skateboarding and snowboarding have always suited a bit of a punk rock attitude and can handle the aggression but to me surfings soul gets a little dirty the minute the fins leave the water.
I’m probably in the minority here but I’d be interested in your thoughts on where surfing is headed.
& finally, do you want some music for your film.. 😉
Ben
This might be a British thing but why is music and art made by mainly left leaning folk? Are right wingers missing a creative gene?
As a visual artist, do you see AI imagery as an opportunity to expand your vision, a threat to your ways of working or largely an irrelevance?
Not a proper question but here goes.
Carving is the foundation of good surfing and skating. Why has no one devoted a film to its evolution? Perhaps a good carve is too intangible to analyse?
Would be interesting to hear Thomas’s POV on the algorithm. Has he noticed the things that people like and are responding to from a creative perspective being shifted by the way the internet serves up things to us? Is there still room for real discovery, vs “you liked this before so here’s another thing like it”? How does his art find its way to people who love it in this day and age? Also, how does he keep or develop his personal style / voice / taste in the face of the great bland "internet culture”— or does he have advice for young artists coming up in the algorithm era on evolving theirs?
I'm so looking forward to Yi-Wo, especially perhaps the trailed surf mat section with Dave Rastovitch and Lauren Hill - there's something magic about that out of control feeling of a mat. Your films always seem to capture the beauty in the margins and the chaos, and an overriding feeling of joy. Do you think there's a danger that the joy of irreverence is becoming lost in a homogenising surf culture?
In the late 90’s there was a real overlap in the Venn diagrams of surfing, skating and snowboarding with a healthy cross over culture. Since then there’s been a real demarcation between board sports with very few creatives avoiding being funnelled into specific pigeon holes, even within surfing and skating - so what keeps your output diverse enough to cover everything from cutting edge skating through to classic logging?
There is a difference between being creative, and the type of creativity that defines or that crosses over and interconnects subcultures. How do you nurture the conditions and space that allow for that second type of creativity?
Sorry I’m late to the party! If it’s not too late I would love to know how you choose what creative projects to prioritise? As an artist, film maker, photographer and more (father!) you must have a lot of ideas, projects, brands and others all asking for energy and attention. How do you choose what to pursue and what to save for later?
I hope I still have time, you talked about politics being owned, which seems to be more evident than ever. Are we living in the time of “ownership” where even ideas are the folly of the Uber rich. And how do we take them back? That for me is what skating was about, a group of us taking back our energy, ideas and endeavours.