00:01
Tonny Sørensen
I chose André Derain, Woman in a Chemise.

00:05
Tonny Sørensen
My uncle was an artist. And it was one of those stories that he lived in Mallorca in the '70s. I met him twice in my life. I got a painting from him when my dad passed away. My dad passed away very young. He was 49, of lung cancer. And he had this little painting of this girl looking out the window that I still have to this day. And this image is very close to that painting. That's why I chose this.

00:36
Tonny Sørensen
It reminds me of the mystique I thought, or the enigma, of my uncle living in Mallorca and what that was like. This is what I long for, living in a beautiful place and just wake up in the morning and paint.

00:51
Tonny Sørensen
This painting, it's simple, a little abstract, it gives you exactly the feeling of what she's thinking. And that's what I like. It's a little loose. I like the way she's looking at you. It looks like photographs back in the day.

01:05
Tonny Sørensen
I love that just being able to get an expression and you get it. You don't have to go close and see how it's done. You just look at it and go, this is exactly who this woman is.

01:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark and the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Tonny Sørensen, a Danish artist and entrepreneur. Welcome, Tonny.

01:47
Tonny Sørensen
Thank you.

01:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
We are very happy to have you here. We are talking to you in Los Angeles, a city you used to live in for many years, but you've moved back to Denmark. What brings you back to the city now? Is your visit about business or pleasure?

02:03
Tonny Sørensen
Yeah, been in the States for 32 years. I moved over here in '92. I decided to move back to Denmark and have my base there. I have a girlfriend here. So the last two years, I've been back and forth, three months here, three months there.

02:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
When I last spoke to you, you had created an artistic community outside of Los Angeles. What happened to this?

02:27
Tonny Sørensen
Well, let me start from the beginning. I started the Von Dutch brand. And it was my view of the American lowbrow art culture that caught me with this brand. I learned so much about the so-called lowbrow Kustom Kulture. Von Dutch was the head of that. He was the father of Kustom Kulture. That was so interesting to me because I was into hot rod cars. I loved horsepowers and I was building this Cadillac from 1965 and I put a bunch of horsepowers in it. In that garage, I met the idea of Von Dutch.

03:03
Tonny Sørensen
There was Ed Roth, Robert Williams. They had been trying to do some kind of t-shirt line for the rockabilly community. Long story short, I bought the brand, I bought the trademark, and I hired the right people at that time, and the brand blew up.

03:22
Tonny Sørensen
Von Dutch had a piece of art called "Planet Illogica." After I sold the brand, I thought it would be interesting to start an art community, Planet Illogica, where I would be helping or guiding or connecting with a bunch of artists like Von Dutch, who weren't successful as an artist when he was alive.

03:40
Tonny Sørensen
And I felt there were so many of these lowbrow artists that I had connected with that would need some kind of guidance or some kind of ideas or help. So the idea of that creative community was basically, whatever you do, there might be another avenue you're not thinking about, to either promote your brand or make a living off it.

04:01
Tonny Sørensen
Facebook had just started maybe six, seven years before then, and it was pretty new still. And I was basically trying to do a Facebook for artists. We literally connected about 6,000 artists for two years. And as everyone knows, Facebook took over. And it was very hard to just go in and create a specific platform for that, because it became more and more expensive. I did all that out of my own pocket.

04:33
Tonny Sørensen
And the idea was basically, if I could at the same time start a bunch of brands, like Von Dutch — clothing, accessories, other things, that I could be a part of that creation and help fund the platform.

04:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It was also an actual place, right?

04:51
Tonny Sørensen
Yeah, I opened my house. I bought this place up in Sequoia National Park, 700 acres. I bought a piece of land and I wanted to build an art community up there. I built a recording studio, a huge place. We had Thai Fridays for about two years, where we started with Thai massage, Thai food, and then we had musicians come over, all kinds of artists from different areas in Los Angeles. I connected with a bunch of my Danish friends in the music and film community. Basically, it was a crazy, crazy time and it was very much fun.

05:31
Tonny Sørensen
And then I changed course, basically for financial reasons. I just said, there's no competition. Everyone's using Facebook and then Instagram and so forth. And I thought that was just a big uphill battle. And so I closed it down from one day to another.

05:49
Tonny Sørensen
I wanted to start focusing on my own life and my own art, because I had met so many people and so many interesting characters that I felt maybe I should try and focus a little bit on my own journey. And since I've always been interested in philosophy and art, I just said, let me take some time for a couple of years to just really focus on reading, writing, and painting, take time off and seclude. So that's where the community ended, basically. I started to go subjective, internal, and really thought maybe I could contribute something on the art side myself.

06:34
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I want to go back in time and talk about what brought you to Los Angeles in the first place. You have a history in martial arts, in taekwondo. You won a gold medal in the World Championships in 1991, and then you became an entrepreneur. What was it that brought you here? Or was it because of these endeavors?

06:56
Tonny Sørensen
Yeah, exactly. At a very young age, I started taekwondo and I was inspired by Bruce Lee like everyone else in the '70s. I started in '78. I was 12 years old when I started karate and then taekwondo at 14. And it's martial arts. There's the "art" word in martial arts. And I was very intrigued by Eastern philosophy and the arts of taekwondo.

07:24
Tonny Sørensen
I thought it was the most beautiful sport. It was like ballet, but powerful. It was very flexible. When that came to Denmark in the '70s, nobody could move like that, kicking and all that stuff. It was just so beautiful. And I was really flexible by nature. So I grew up from 14 to 18, and at 20, I became the Danish heavyweight champion and started going international.

07:53
Tonny Sørensen
And my focus was always to try and be as good technically as possible. I wasn't the strongest. They called me Mowgli when I was a kid, jungle boy. I was super flexible and that made me one of the best technicians in the class. So I always focused on technique, and martial arts is different from art in the way that you're supposed to hide your feelings. So when you're in the ring with someone for three minutes, times three, and you have to fight, you cannot show your pain. That is what you learn to hide.

08:32
Tonny Sørensen
I win the championship. We became the second best country in the world because it was József Salim, Gergely Salim, and me. We won two gold medals and one silver. And that had never happened before. And it hasn't happened since.

08:47
Tonny Sørensen
I ran a really nice taekwondo school in Gladsaxe. I was constantly traveling, bringing back all the stuff that they were doing internationally. And so we managed in five years to become the best school in the world. And they gave me an award for Taekwondo Hall of Fame in 2012, like 20 years after. And I was very proud of that.

09:13
Tonny Sørensen
What I was trying to get back to here is, I got the green card from the gold medal. And my idea was to come over here and become an action hero, because in the '80s, late '80s, it was all about Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, all the big action heroes. And I was good technically. And I felt I could be a Dolph Lundgren or at least enter some kind of movie career. So I took acting for five, six years, from '92 to '98 maybe, something like that.

09:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I want to tell the listeners who don't know you that you are extremely tall. You are six foot six, so you have an impressive figure too.

09:58
Tonny Sørensen
Oh, thank you very much. I wanted to quit taekwondo and step into a new era. We had been in Los Angeles a few times for training camps, and Miami as well. And I just loved America. Back in the day, it was the big dream.

10:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it about it that you loved, you think?

10:16
Tonny Sørensen
Possibilities. I had given up some sort of formal education in Denmark, and I just was very, very high energy, and I wanted to try and find a place that would match my energy and my ideas. And I didn't feel Denmark could. The ceilings weren't too high back in the day.

10:35
Tonny Sørensen
Over here, the difference was, when I came over here and showed what I was able to do, people went crazy. And that didn't happen in Denmark. It was just like, okay. So you get a lot more attention for your skills over here. And I was young, I was in my 20s. I felt this country might embrace me in a different way.

10:55
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So what happened? Why didn't you make it in the movie business?

10:58
Tonny Sørensen
I think again, it comes down to martial artists are able to hide their feelings. And in acting class, I didn't feel I could show my emotions very well. I had a very, very hard time breaking through that barrier that I had built up for so many years, not showing pain, emotions, not being able to cry.

11:19
Tonny Sørensen
I got a couple of short films. I got a couple of things, and I hated it. I was so stiff. It was so different than being in the ring fighting, because that's what I was meant to do. And then you have to go in and you have to be vulnerable. So that's a part of what I've been working on, it's very hard for somebody like me to show vulnerability.

11:41
Tonny Sørensen
After doing it for a couple of years. I was like, I actually don't want to be an action hero. I'd rather search for that place inside of myself that I can grow with. And not just step from one arena to another, just because you have some looks or you have some skills. So I guess I just changed my mind, and it was fine. I learned so much about myself.

12:00
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Do you remember what your first week in Los Angeles was like?

12:06
Tonny Sørensen
So after the World Championship, I won that in November '91, I celebrated for one month in Copenhagen and I went to Jamaica. I listened to dance hall reggae, I smoked weed, I drank beer. It was just like the most amazing time of my life. I have been listening to dancehall reggae from the '90s ever since, because it was such an opening for me, just to be able to just let loose. I had so many injuries, I didn't care. I was like, I got a gold medal. What am I gonna do with my life?

12:35
Tonny Sørensen
Starting with Jamaica, going to Miami, two of my very best friends, still to this day, joined me for about six months. We drove cross country from Miami to LA back up to New York and back over again. And then they left me. And then I met my ex-wife at a diving class and we decided to go from Miami to Los Angeles and pursue my career.

13:05
Tonny Sørensen
So she followed me over here and that's how it started. And that's when I remember coming here the first time it was just, wow, the possibilities were just amazing. We got a place in Beverly Hills. And I started doing acting. And I really loved all the creative stuff, all the opportunities.

13:28
Tonny Sørensen
I was very much into cars, old cars, right away. My thing was big Cadillac. I just loved being able to just explore that side. And that's actually how I ended up with Von Dutch, with a Cadillac I was customizing, and met the name.

13:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did you know about Kenny Howard before you —

13:49
Tonny Sørensen
Nothing. Yeah, Kenny Howard, was a.k.a. Von Dutch. And nobody knew anything about the guy. Only the hardcore people in the hot rod community and Kustom Kulture community knew about him.

14:04
Tonny Sørensen
The logo was beautiful, and then when I got the stories, I was like, this is crazy that we don't know about this artist. We know about Basquiat and Picasso. But he's the West coast, he's the hot rod, underground lowbrow Salvador Dalí of that. And he paints on cars, he paints on everything. I looked at the stuff and I was like, this is amazing. And I'd love to do a clothing brand with that.

14:34
Tonny Sørensen
As crazy as it sounds, we ended up having Britney Spears and Paris Hilton sporting it. And he must have turned in his grave, that's what people told me. But I think at the end of the day, he might be proud.

14:48
Tonny Sørensen
It took two years and a divorce, and everything else around, to get my grip on it. Oh god, it was tough. When I bought into it, we were focusing on overalls like garage wear, coveralls, basic t-shirts and tank tops and some '50s denim, James Dean, Steve McQueen type of stuff. It was very, very little sales. I was frustrated. It was like, what am I doing here?

15:17
Tonny Sørensen
And then finally I was like, we need to do something more interesting for girls, young girls. Then all of a sudden, I just woke up one morning and changed course and said, we're going to do something different. We need to make it more pop. We need to make it more colorful and more interesting. I hired Christian Audigier as the head designer and he had come from France and did some amazing denim, especially for women.

15:45
Tonny Sørensen
And I started hiring more interesting people for the store. And back in the day, we hired cross dressers, we hired a bunch of not just rockabilly types, but different fashionistas, and started doing a bunch of creative stuff on Melrose in the retail store. I was just like, you know what, we need to try something different. It's not going to work the way it was set up to be.

16:08
Tonny Sørensen
And then little by little, designers came in, stylists came in, and they were recommending it to their star —

16:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Their client.

16:19
Tonny Sørensen
Their clients. And all of a sudden, from one day to another, it was literally March of 2003, it started.

16:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Who wore it first? And when did you know, Oh, this is going to be big?

16:34
Tonny Sørensen
I didn't realize it at the time. I thought, this is cool, Britney Spears comes in, she closes the store, she has bodyguards and big black SUVs outside and we have to close the store for half a day. And all the staff was excited about it and we're like, this is crazy. Jay-Z comes in, we did his first Black Tour. Ashton Kutcher came in, and then Vin Diesel came in. He wanted a cool shirt for the movie Fast and Furious. And all of a sudden— oh, Tommy Lee came in.

17:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Tommy Lee?

17:10
Tonny Sørensen
Yeah. And it was funny because it all started beginning of 2003. And then six months later we were all over MTV. Fast and Furious came out and MTV Cribs came out, then Ashton Kutcher's show came out and they were all wearing Von Dutch.

17:27
Tonny Sørensen
I went to the bank and I just remembered the bank teller told me, "This is Von Dutch Originals? I've seen this on Tommy Lee." and I was like, yeah. And that's when it started dawning on me that, whoa, this promotion is amazing. All of a sudden all the nightclubs came, the hottest clubs in LA came and said, we want to do a Von Dutch Thursday night.

17:49
Tonny Sørensen
Can you do that? We give you the table, you bring celebrities, we give you free champagne. And all of a sudden, before you know it, we have four nights a week in the hottest clubs in LA, where we were hanging out with rappers, rock stars, and we had a whole corner. We had all the champagne we wanted, and the club sponsored that. They put Von Dutch on the door. And so I was busy day and night.

18:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Crazy times.

18:20
Tonny Sørensen
It was amazing.

18:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah.

18:23
Tonny Sørensen
I don't even know how that would happen today. I don't even know how it would recreate that energy. So it was super cool.

18:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What did you learn about celebrity culture in the US?

18:33
Tonny Sørensen
I had a chance to meet most of them. I just remember the athletes were the ones that I felt more connected to, and musicians. Serena Williams hung out at the store for half a day. It was wonderful because she was such a gentle soul and she was so powerful. She was at her top for years, but just remember specifically, Serena Williams was amazing.

18:58
Tonny Sørensen
Oh my God, So many musicians were amazing. They have a soul. They have a heart. They're very vulnerable and they're very concerned about their looks and their image. And it's just nice to be able to talk about what they want to achieve, because what I did, I opened up and I said, what do you want? We do the whole thing for you and you don't have to pay for it.

19:18
Tonny Sørensen
They say that Von Dutch started the influencer culture, because before then it was: one person gets hired for a brand, Nike hires Tiger Woods, and then they run with it and they hire all of them and they pay them millions of dollars. I was able to create symbiotic relationships based on a little bit of a conversation.

19:40
Tonny Sørensen
And the most important thing was that it was not from me. I said Von Dutch was this cool guy that nobody knows about. He was a mystique. He was an enigma. And they were like, this is cool, why don't we know about this? Now you do. And so I used Von Dutch's background and his importance in American culture to make celebrities understand that they are sporting something cool. We created a total symbiotic relationship.

20:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How effective was it as a marketing tool?

20:11
Tonny Sørensen
It was second to none. It hadn't been done this way before. The only brands I knew before were brands that blew up by having one group, one thing. We had movie stars. We had rock stars, rappers, athletes. We had every corner and we had young and old and female, male, it was not directed to anything else than that.

20:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you had Jay-Z, and then you had Britney Spears.

20:45
Tonny Sørensen
We had all of them, yeah. We had Top Ten rock bands, we had the Top Ten rappers, we had Top Ten athletes, and it just came out at the same time. Then internationally, the K-pop bands from Korea wanted to look like the Americans and the Danes and the Swedes. We had the boy bands from Thailand coming in. We had the UK coming in. France. We had Johnny Hallyday, it was really surrealistic. I don't even understand how it happened.

21:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Would you say that you had a business philosophy that you lived by, and would you say there was anything Danish about it?

21:26
Tonny Sørensen
I did not have a business philosophy about it other than I knew I had put a lot of money into it personally and I believed in it. And it's not a rule because I've done that since and I've failed and I'd done that before and I failed. We hardly ever talk about our failures, but I had been doing a bunch of stuff both before and after that wasn't successful.

21:49
Tonny Sørensen
So the philosophy after, I guess, is you really, really have to believe in it and you have to do everything in your power to make it happen the way you envision it. And it's not always easy to do. And sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes you have a project that you believe in for a little while, and then you learn so much about it from the outside, from people, or consumers, that you go, maybe this wasn't a great idea.

22:15
Tonny Sørensen
I've always loved stuff that is a little bit controversial, a little bit edgy. Everything I've touched in my life has been a little bit borderline crazy. Even the building projects I've done have been borderline crazy. I don't feel I want to live my life just making money for money's sake.

22:34
Tonny Sørensen
Even all the way back to taekwondo. The way I ran it was edgy. The people I brought in were edgy. The way we trained was crazy and edgy. So I guess the philosophy from that is, and that can go wrong. You can break an arm and a leg here and there. And also in business.

22:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you mentioned failures, we all have them. What is the main thing that you've learned from failing, would you say?

22:59
Tonny Sørensen
Listen to people. I think you have to listen to people.

23:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What does that mean?

23:03
Tonny Sørensen
That means, most of the times, if you're too stubborn, and you go too far, and people keep telling you this is not going to work or this is not a great idea, then maybe you should listen to people. It's funny I say that because I proved myself wrong on that a few times. If I had listened to people doing Von Dutch when I started, I should have stopped it. Maybe, maybe not.

23:28
Tonny Sørensen
I'll be honest with you. I didn't know anything about Von Dutch and the clothing industry before. It was my first venture in clothing and apparel.

23:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
But you had a gut feeling or something.

23:39
Tonny Sørensen
I just felt there was something really interesting about the brand.

23:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were able to make a really good living here in Los Angeles. It was a success. Now we talk about it as if it was a failure. It wasn't. What was your experience of being a successful businessman in the US like?

23:59
Tonny Sørensen
It was surrealistic. I never really thought about it when it happened. I just thought this is going to happen again tomorrow and the next year and the next year and until you get sick of certain elements of it. As I said, I bought this Sequoia National Park ranch in 2010. And I started going up there on weekends. And when I came back to Los Angeles on Mondays, I couldn't wait for Thursday or Friday to happen so I could get up there again.

24:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Which was a sign, right?

24:31
Tonny Sørensen
It was a sign. I came back and I just didn't feel I wanted to continue that lifestyle. Eventually I sold the house in Beverly Hills and moved up there permanently. And then I stopped visiting LA. I basically checked out.

24:47
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What was it about the serenity of the place and I guess the artistic world that made you make that move?

25:56
Tonny Sørensen
So I guess the idea of living as a martial artist in the mountains with a river running through, it was a childhood dream. It was one of those master things you wanted to try in your life. I built a martial arts studio right next to the river, and a hot tub. And I kept everything untouched except for building the house. So nature around, it was like a beautiful house that stuck out of nature with a river running through.

25:24
Tonny Sørensen
I called it my church by the river. And I just remember time stood still. The river was rushing. It's the steepest river in the United States. Especially in springtime when the snowmelt comes down, it has that constant brainwave shhhh. Constant. You've never slept so good in my life.

25:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Constant meditation.

25:47
Tonny Sørensen
Constant meditation. And the only thing you start watching is the sun come up and the moon comes up and the stars are totally bright. I didn't wear a watch. I didn't know dates. For seven years. I literally started seeing where the sun came up. I could say this is March because the sun is right here. It goes at the horizon left to right. And I knew exactly this tree. I was so good at predicting—

26:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So no use of computers?

26:15
Tonny Sørensen
No, not really, not really. I didn't have internet the first couple of years. And then we got internet. I remember sometimes going down to rent movies at Blockbuster down in town. It was like half an hour away. The first little town, three rivers. Yeah, it was magic. It was really magic.

26:35
Tonny Sørensen
Started growing a big garden. We had cattle, we had chickens, all that stuff. I just wanted to live a dream life in the mountains and try that. So I gave up on LA. I gave up on all that stuff here. I lost most of my connections. I was really on a journey to try and find something for myself that made sense.

26:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What kind of church was it? You called it your church.

27:02
Tonny Sørensen
I'm agnostic. I'm searching. So it's a church for curiosity and I guess growth, spiritual growth. I'm not bound to one thing. I keep exploring, I'm not judging anything. Yeah, I don't know. It's a church because it's your life and whatever you find, I think.

27:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And what about your artistic self? What did you learn about yourself artistically when you were living there?

27:35
Tonny Sørensen
I learned I was scared to put anything out. I was so intimidated. I started painting, and really started taking photography seriously. I didn't want to show anybody anything. It was kind of similar to when I was training. I hated training on the national team together with other people. But when I am by myself, I have my program, I put aside my insecurities.

27:57
Tonny Sørensen
I basically was a joker, the school clown, when I was training with other people, because I didn't want to show my vulnerability until the fight. And the same thing in art. I didn't want to show anything before I knew that it was ready. So I ended up painting maybe 50 paintings that I put in a container and didn't show anybody else but my girlfriend at the time.

28:22
Tonny Sørensen
And I was so insecure about it. Because I was like, this is bullshit, anybody can do that. I was trying to figure out what is it I wanted to do for me. And it became very subjective. I started reading philosophy, especially this guy called Marcus Gabriel, a German philosopher. I love it because I don't understand it.

28:40
Tonny Sørensen
I'm just reading this book right now called Sense, Nonsense, and Subjectivity. And he has a word he always uses called qualia. And I started thinking if I can create a subjective feeling when I look at it, like something that pleases me. And that had to be something about serenity, peace, non-objective.

29:02
Tonny Sørensen
So I was trying to make pictures or photographs that were non-objective so that your mind can go off. My first series — I had a show in Napa Valley, was all these ocean pictures I took over the Pacific Ocean for three years. I woke up every morning, went out and took long exposure images in the winter time.

29:25
Tonny Sørensen
So three years' times three months, so maybe nine months, every morning I drove out to the coast and captured the small significant changes on the horizon, where the sun comes up. So I was out there five in the morning and waited till six for the sun to just show a little bit of signs. And then that was my meditation.

29:47
Tonny Sørensen
That's what it ended up being. It ended up being very subjective. And qualia means what you feel when you see those minor changes in colors and you stop thinking. You look at it, but you gaze out. So I took a lot of pictures in fog, where the colors are just very subjective. And I guess I did that because you can pick any object in the world to paint, and it just becomes that object and it makes you focus on that specific thing.

30:17
Tonny Sørensen
And I found out I wanted to do stuff that is your subjective experience. You might think about anything other than the object. It's almost to the point where I don't want you to understand you're looking at anything else than you're getting an emotion back from it. So I learned from the ranch that I was so afraid of showing specific things because I didn't feel I was a good painter or good photographer.

30:45
Tonny Sørensen
I don't have the education. My stepdad was a photographer, so I guess I absorbed a lot of stuff from him growing up. But he was a studio photographer, of furniture, architecture. Taught me a lot about how to see things. So I guess that's the only thing I can say I have an education in regards to that.

31:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You did the community outside of LA based on Christiania. And you had a brand at one point called Christiania Republic, too.

31:18
Tonny Sørensen
Yes, it's called California Christiania Republic. And the funny thing is, I took the trademark worldwide, and then Christiania came to me and said, you can't use our trademark. And I said, well, let's make a deal. They said, this is hard because in our community, we have 100% votes. We have never done a business deal with anybody outside of Christiania. And we own those three dots, the three yellow dots.

31:43
Tonny Sørensen
I said, I have the trademark in the United States and Europe. You have it in Denmark. So maybe you talk to the community and let's make a deal where I'd love to promote you guys. And the reason why I did California Christiania Republic was because since '71, Christiania has been a free town. And they've been selling hash and weed out there.

32:06
Tonny Sørensenb
Squatters took over the place in 1971. They needed a place to stay and have an artistic community. And I loved that idea. I grew up with it. I was probably, what is it, '71? I was 7 years old when it started.

32:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And it's a very strange concept because they don't have to pay taxes there, which is a very uncommon thing in Denmark, which relies a lot on taxes.

32:29
Tonny Sørensen
I like it and I don't like it, but I like it because it's the only place in the world where a government has accepted some kind of disorganization in society. They're so strict about everything else, but Christiana has become, if not the first — I don't know if Tivoli or Christiana is the top tourist attraction, but it's definitely up there.

32:48
Tonny Sørensen
When California started to want it in 2010 and '11, there were all these ballots about legalized marijuana, right? And I thought, this is interesting, because I have an art community here. It feels like Christiania in California and we can smoke weed here. We're putting it on the ballot. So I was like, let's do California Christiania Republic to introduce the idea that maybe California can become this amazing artistic community.

33:16
Tonny Sørensen
And I promoted a brand, oneZ. We did Bob Marley football shirts from the '70s. We did all this vintage stuff. And Christiania gave me a deal for licensing. I said, you get the trademark back and you work with me on this brand, and you can sell it out here and we can promote it together, but all I want to do is really promote what you guys are doing.

33:44
Tonny Sørensen
I talked a lot about that to Risenga. Risenga is the chairman of Christiania. He liked what I was doing and he sold the idea to everyone else and we got a deal. And it didn't last long because I think I sold the brand a year after. And that was one of those things where I thought this was the greatest idea since, you know. And it didn't capture the people yet.

34:11
Tonny Sørensen
And a funny thing is now people are asking again, what do you do with that brand? It was so cool. And now it's relevant. Before it was, what are you guys doing? I think I was ten years too fast with this idea. I think today would have been a lot more interesting.

34:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You went back to Denmark. You became an American citizen two years ago and still you went back. What made you decide to move back to your home country?

34:38
Tonny Sørensen
I wanted to reconnect. My mom has dementia —

34:42
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh, sorry to hear that.

34:43
Tonny Sørensen
Two years, two years ago. My sister and niece are living with my mom in the same house. And I just felt I had to go back and help with the situation. And check in with a bunch of my old friends. And I also felt I wanted to reconnect with Copenhagen. Copenhagen is completely different than it used to be. There's so many more things going on and activities.

35:08
Tonny Sørensen
It's a different place than when I left. It was depressed back in the day. It was nothing compared to today. Today they have full-on events constantly. If it's not music, it's art. And they cleaned up the canals, now you can swim all over Copenhagen in the summer. I don't know. Copenhagen is rocking right now. They don't have all the issues that they have here. So you go back 30 years after and you look at it, you go, this is an incredible city now.

35:38
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were born in Søborg in Copenhagen, about 60 years ago. Were you always longing to go abroad as a kid or was that something that came later in life?

35:50
Tonny Sørensen
No. My parents went on a charter vacation once a year. And they let me and my sister stay with my grandma in the summer house. I did not go on a plane before I was 18. I had friends, first day in school, they were like, oh, we went to Germany on the Autobahn. We went to Italy and this and that.

36:09
Tonny Sørensen
We went to the summer house just north of Copenhagen, like half an hour, or an hour or something, right? And we were in the summer house with grandma and we couldn't do anything. We had to create our own reality. So I was longing to see what the hell is going on.

36:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So your parents not taking you along to summer vacation made you long for adventure.

36:31
Tonny Sørensen
That's how it is, right? All you can dream about is to see other cultures. And I took revenge, I swear to God.

36:40
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you ever complain to them and say, why didn't you bring me?

36:44
Tonny Sørensen
No, because they couldn't. They were trying to make their relationship work. My dad took education when I was four or five years old, he was working on a three-shift at a curtain factory.

36:57
Tonny Sørensen
My mom was a hairdresser half-day, and took care of us. And we were shoved over to grandma after school. They had a hard time. And they were very young when they had us. My dad was 23 and my mom was 19 when she was pregnant. So they were two young kids who were trying to figure it out. And God bless them that they were able to take a charter vacation to Mallorca once a year to try and reconnect.

37:24
Tonny Sørensen
They ended up getting divorced when I was 10. But, from zero to 10, we were at grandma's place most of the times. That was just the times. And I think I don't regret anything.

37:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
No, and being in a summer house in the northern part of Zeeland doesn't sound too bad either.

37:42
Tonny Sørensen
No, because you're a kid and it's just exploring. It's big when you can go for an ice cream in the afternoon and a hot dog. That's the highlight of the day, right? It's fine. I don't blame them. I think they did an incredible job because they gave me the opportunity to seek everything for myself.

38:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So having been abroad for so many years and had so many adventures outside of Denmark, how has that made you reflect on your Danishness, on your Danish roots and how significant they've been to you in your life?

38:17
Tonny Sørensen
I think they've been incredibly significant because when you are deprived of all the stuff as a kid, your imagination goes crazy and you're seeking a bunch of adventures and you dream about adventures. I think it creates an enormous creative source inside of you that you want to get out. I would have had no desire to try and experience anything myself if everything was handed to me. They didn't raise me like that by choice, me and my sister. They had no choice, but it turned out that it was beneficial.

38:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You have reinvented yourself quite a lot of times. Some people stay in the same lane all their life. What kind of advice would you give them? What is the trick to reinvention?

39:08
Tonny Sørensen
It's very easy. In martial arts, you get belts. You start with the yellow belt and orange belt and green belt and blue belt and red belt. And then you become a black belt. And it takes 10 years to be good at anything if you work really hard. Okay? I think for me, I grew up with that whole idea of belts. So I give myself a yellow belt and a blue belt and a green belt, when I look at my own journey in a certain area, right?

39:38
Tonny Sørensen
It's so specific. It's so true. It's so real. And in martial arts, you're probably the best physical age when you are 27, 25, and I was 25 and 27 when I was my physical top. But I didn't understand back in the day that a grandmaster 9th degree, he's 60 years old or 70 years old and 80 years old, that he would know more than me, because I'm stronger than him.

40:06
Tonny Sørensen
Now I'm 60, and I realized, wow, this is life. These belts you get, it's life. It's mastery. How do you keep yourself motivated? How do you surround yourself with the right people? That's how you get those belts. So I give myself time. I'm very patient. I don't judge myself other than I want to do this today and I'm going to explore this and I take my time and I don't need anybody's verification.

40:37
Tonny Sørensen
I really hate to be in a box with anything. My education was as a radio mechanic. I hate being a radio mechanic my whole life. The minute I took that education, was obsolete. Nobody had their radios fixed or television fixed.

40:51
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You had to reinvent yourself.

40:53
Tonny Sørensen
I had to.

40:56
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And finally, what can we expect from you next?

40:59
Tonny Sørensen
I really hope that my photography and my paintings will resonate with the right places, the right communities, and something I can grow with. That is my dream.

41:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
All right. Thank you so much for being with us today, Tonny. It was a great pleasure.

41:19
Tonny Sørensen
Thank you very much yourself. Thank you. Appreciate it.

41:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Tonny Sørensen chose André Derain's Kvinde i chemise or Woman in a Chemise from 1904 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.